


Head Case

by leaper182



Series: Forged [12]
Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Minor spoilers for "Dead Beat", Minor spoilers for "Death Masks", Minor spoilers for "Rules of Engagement", Minor spoilers for "Second City", Minor spoilers for "Soul Beneficiary", Minor spoilers for "Storm Front", Minor spoilers for "Things That Go Bump", Minor spoilers for "Welcome to the Jungle", Minor spoilers for "What About Bob?", Minors spoilers for "The Boone Identity"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-21
Updated: 2008-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:44:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaper182/pseuds/leaper182
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Murphy calls Harry in for a murder, it's only the tip of the iceberg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Case

**Author's Note:**

> An amazing amount of thanks goes out to shiplizard, beachkid, and gehayi for their beta-reading, encouragement, and questions. This fic would've never seen the light of day, if not for you guys. Thank you _very_ much!
> 
> Originally posted on August 21, 2008.

Sigmund Freud once said that a cigar is a cigar, and while I can agree with the sentiment, sometimes a dream really isn't just a dream. In my line of work, you get used to the idea that what you just dreamed could actually be something important to watch out for. The stuff dreams are made of aren't necessarily all that great, either, so it's kind of nice to have an advance-warning system.

But, like with everything else, sometimes the advance warning system has a hiccup, goes on the fritz, or just craps out. Like, waking up three nights in a row from a nightmare, and not being able to remember a damn thing about it.

Unfortunately, insomnia's not that strange for me, either. If I'm not working a case that demands all of my attention for as long as I can stay awake, then it's usually a nightmare or two about things that have happened, or things that _could_ happen, that keeps me up. So, when sleeplessness hits, I try to make myself useful. Clean up the mess I made around the office or my living room, put books back where I pulled them out from.

Make some potions.

See, I'm the magical equivalent of a computer geek. Even when I'm just puttering around the house, trying to think of something productive, it ends up being magical somehow. I've already made the spells in my staff more efficient, thanks to Bob's suggestions, and I occasionally make it a habit to touch-up the wards that are painted all around my place. I should probably learn how to play an instrument, but since a piano won't fit in my living room, and violins are freaking expensive, I guess brewing the odd potion (while not exactly a cheap hobby, depending on the potion) is my best bet.

I can't help it. Magic ends up being so _cool_ sometimes, and if it weren't for the fact that I've hung up a shingle as Chicago's only professional wizard listed in the phone book, I'd probably spend a lot more time just smiling stupidly whenever I come up with something new. Sometimes, Bob gets as enthusiastic as I do, though his focus can be a bit morbid for my tastes occasionally. Being nearly a thousand years old can do that to you, I guess.

Still, I was in the middle of making a dreamless sleep potion when I heard the phone ring in my office.

Making my way out of the lab and closing the steel door behind me, I got to the phone and picked it up. "Dresden." I glanced over at the wind-up clock on my desk and noticed it was almost one o'clock. That's never a good sign.

"Harry, I need your help," Murphy said, sounding grim.

I frowned. "What's up?"

"I've got a corpse, and I need your take on how he died."

"Is it on the books?" I asked. While I've been getting work lately, it was barely enough to pay the bills. Any jobs I got from Chicago PD would help ease tension between me and my landlord considerably.

Murphy sighed, sounding annoyed. "Yes. And don't wear any shoes you plan on keeping."

I blinked. "You're kidding, right?"

"Hardly." She gave me the address, which I wrote down, and after getting my gear together and reactivating the wards behind me, I headed off into the night.

The steel mill just outside of downtown Chicago had been standing by I-55, old and run-down, since before I'd moved to the city proper years ago. It enjoyed an infamous reputation because it had been abandoned for years, but no one wanted to tear it down because of the asbestos that had been used in its construction. It was a squat-looking building, and while I ordinarily didn't give it a second glance when I drove past it, the two or three black-and-whites along with a medical examiner's van near the front entrance would've been enough to attract anybody's notice. Heading inside, I made sure to clip my ID on the lapel of my leather coat, and a uniformed officer led me to the crime scene. He gave me a facemask to wear, and after I strapped it on over my nose and mouth and pinched the metal closed over my nose, we joined the others.

The corpse lay in the middle of an open area, what equipment had been there long since removed from the building when it had been shut down, leaving a good view of the crime scene. Inside the taped-off area, I could see the body laying where it had fallen, his limbs splayed, surrounded by an incredible amount of not-quite-clear water, and drenched. There wasn't the telltale whiff of blood, or any kind of damage to any of the surroundings that screamed gunfight. If it weren't for the police tape cordoning off the area, I probably would've figured that a guy had slipped on a pretty large puddle and had knocked himself out.

I could see Murphy and Kirmani standing off to one side, Murph talking to one of Butters' assistants while Kirmani was talking with a skinny, nervous-looking kid and his friend, both of them dressed in designer black clothes, everyone wearing little face masks like the one I'd been given. When I reached out to feel any magic in the area, I felt a buzzing sensation against my skin, like touching a vibrating washing machine with one hand.

I pitter-pattered over to the corpse and squatted down as best I could on the balls of my feet. I was almost kind of grateful that I was just wearing a leather coat and not something longer, because the puddle of water around the victim was spreading. The victim, Mr. Soggy, I supposed, was a man with stringy brown hair, frog-like eyes, and had the bloated look of a man who'd been dead and floating in Lake Michigan for a few weeks. When Murphy's shoes hove into view, I Spocked an eyebrow up at her. "If this is what happens when you drink more than eight glasses of water a day, I'm cutting back."

Murphy snorted. "Cute, Harry." She looked at Mr. Soggy. "Any ideas?"

"From a guy drowned on solid ground? It's not anything I've ever heard of." I looked at the water I was squatting in. "Where'd all this water come from?"

"That's what we were hoping you could tell us," Murphy said.

I made with the Spock impersonation again.

Murphy nodded at the man on the floor. "All of the water is coming from him, but we can't figure out how it's happening."

"And you think I know?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

Murphy didn't look impressed. "It's weird, and you're the only guy I've got who's an expert on 'weird'."

I nodded. After the past couple of years of working together with Murphy on cases, I'd gotten used to being her go-to guy whenever something supernatural came up, and it was kind of stupid to deny it. "At least now I know what you meant about my shoes."

"And you thought I was kidding," she said with a snort. "Are you sure you've never seen anything like this before?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember seeing something like to Mr. Soggy here," I said, waving a hand at the corpse. "Going by the crime scene, there were no scuff marks or signs of a struggle, though the water could be hiding anything that might've dug into the floor. Maybe he was drowned, and then dumped here as some kind of message?"

"That's what we'd like to find out," Murphy said, not looking pleased with my answer.

I shook my head. "It's nice for you to call me in, but I'm not getting it, Murph. What makes this 'weird'?"

"The water, Harry," she said. When I showed her that she hadn't revealed the secrets of the universe, she explained. "When the guys from the morgue tried to get him into a body bag, he started leaking all of this." She waved a hand at the puddle. Now that I was paying closer attention to it, I saw that it had a faint pinkish tinge to it, like diluted red food dye. I looked again at the guy's face while Murphy continued. "We don't know how much he's already leaked, but if this keeps up, the meat wagon could get flooded pretty quick if they try to move him."

Standing up, I gripped my staff and gently prodded the corpse's shoulder with the butt of it. More pinkish water oozed out of him, and I don't mean that it poured out of the guy's mouth or anything -- it literally oozed out of his eyes, his nose, his ears, even his skin like a grotesque sponge. As I looked closer at the guy's face, I noticed that his skin was almost bone-white, and that the pinkish color was darker coming out of his nose and mouth.

"Stars and _stones_ ," I yelped when I realized what I was looking at. I did a stupid little dance to try to get out of the water and away from the body as fast as I could. I wish I could've pretended it was because of some kind of allergy to dead people, but suddenly realizing I was standing in a pool of blood, heavily diluted with water, tends to dampen a guy's chances of bullshitting his way out of it and still being able to save face.

Murphy shot me a look like she was sure I'd gone off the deep end. "What?"

"It's not just water, Murph," I told her as calmly as I could. "He's leaking blood. I'm betting that when he stops leaking, and the guys get him to the morgue, he's not going to have any blood left in his body."

Murphy blinked, and then stepped out of the puddle with a grimace. "Great. And I liked these shoes." Shaking off one foot in a futile gesture to dry it, she looked back at me expectantly. "Well? This starting to ring any bells now?"

I shook my head. "At this point, I really don't know. There's not a lot of supernatural creepy-crawlies that can dish out this much water, let alone drown a guy and drag him here without leaving a trace."

"By 'not a lot', does that mean you have a short list?" Murphy asked with exaggerated patience.

I smiled. "A water elemental could dish out this kind of punishment, no problem. Probably fill the victim's lungs with water."

"I'm hearing a 'but'," Murphy said sourly.

"But," I said, dragging out the word for effect, "water elementals don't have that kind of intelligence. They have to be summoned by somebody, and then they have to be tightly controlled." I looked around pointedly at the crime scene. Except for the expanding puddle on the floor that I was trying to discreetly dodge, everything else was dry. "Not only that, but this place is way too dry for it to be an elemental. If it was taking out Mr. Soggy here, it would've covered everything _else_ in the process."

Murphy scowled. "All right, fine, no water elemental. Any other ideas?"

I frowned. "Whoever did this had a hell of a lot of power to play with, if they were able to saturate this guy's entire body with water. Other than that...." I shrugged. "I can't tell for sure. Let me go hit the books, and when I come up with something, I'll letcha know. Okay?"

Murphy didn't look happy with my answer, but at least this time, she wasn't asking me to play with black magic to figure out who'd killed this guy. This guy had drowned on dry land, as weird as that sounds, and while it broke the first law of magic all to hell, it wasn't necessarily black magic. Someone just let loose with way too much water and turned the guy into a sponge.

"Fine," she said. "But if you find out anything--"

"You'll be the first to know," I told her, nodding. "Promise."

She snorted, and then made her way back to Kirmani and the ME's guys. I made my way back home.

Since I was already awake, I figured I might as well hit the books now instead of later, and when Bob finally materialized hours later, the fiery ember swirling around him, trailing black smoke, I had already nose-deep in a book about Greek mythology. It was a bit of a long shot, but since I had no idea what was going on, I figured that it never hurt to cover all the bases.

"A new client already?" Bob asked, blocking the light as he leaned over to see what I was reading.

"Murphy called," I replied, a yawn escaping before I could suppress it. "Looks like somebody drowned on dry land."

"Unusual, but not unheard of," Bob pointed out. "Was the murder weapon a pool or a toilet? Perhaps a repeat of the police officer with the enchanted branding iron?"

"God I hope not." I shook my head. It didn't take long to bring Bob up to speed about what few details I knew about the murder so far, but when I did, he frowned, curiosity in his eyes.

"Curiouser and curiouser," he murmured, sounding intrigued. "What have you been looking at?"

I flipped the book closed on my arm to show him the cover. "Greek mythology. I'm thinking maybe a naiad did it?" I knew that it had been a stretch, but it had been the best I could think of while running on less sleep than usual.

Bob narrowed his eyes, looking skeptical. "Naiads don't have that kind of power. What sort of facility was it again?"

"A steel mill," I said. "The one out by I-55 that's been shut down for years because of the asbestos."

Bob shook his head. "That blows your theory right out of the water then, if you don't mind my saying so. Naiads need to be near the body of water that they're the patroness of. If it had been a water-bottling plant, perhaps, but all of the metal and machinery in the vicinity would have seriously hampered any attempt by a natural creature to effect any change, let alone kill someone like you've described."

"Any thoughts?" I asked Bob, mirroring Murphy's question to me earlier in the night.

"Did you sense any residual magic in the area?" Bob asked.

I nodded slowly. "Some, but it didn't feel like it does when magic's been used in an area."

Bob frowned. "Oh?"

"It was more like a buzzing against my skin," I said. "That sound familiar to you?"

Bob shook his head, frown still firmly in place. "No, it doesn't. My, my." He then narrowed a penetrating gaze at me. "Did you sleep at all last night?"

"No, I didn't," I replied evenly. "And it's not the first sleepless night that I've had." I could tell from the way he was looking at me what he was going to ask next.

"Did you have that nightmare again?" he asked.

I sighed. "Yes, Bob, and no, I don't remember any details."

Bob's lips pursed, and I let myself get mildly distracted by the curve of his lower lip before I sternly told myself to get back to the subject at hand. "Bob, it's nothing."

Bob glanced at me with a snort that clearly said that he didn't believe me. "Harry, when your health is concerned, you're rarely in a position to know what's best for you." He looked pointedly at the book in my arms. "If you're thinking that a naiad had any chance of killing a man inside of a steel mill, I think you need sleep."

"Very funny," I grumbled. "Murphy needs anything I can give her as soon as possible."

"And the fact that I'm a researcher who doesn't require sleep didn't occur to you?" he asked mildly.

"I've already asked you to look up a lot of information for me this past week," I said. "You deserve the downtime, and I should learn not to rely on you so much."

Bob blinked, looking genuinely surprised for a moment before recovering. "You know you don't need to give me time off."

"You bitch if I don't," I muttered, scrubbing my face with both hands in an effort to wake up a little more. My head already felt like it had been stuffed with cotton.

Bob snorted. "I see. Very well, then if I'm officially on vacation, why not let me research this for you on my own time? It already sounds much more fascinating than figuring out the best way to preserve amaranth for minor bindings."

I shook my head. "It's fine."

"So I should read absolutely nothing into the fact that you're about to land face-first into a section about Hephaestus, then?" Bob asked.

I grumbled, very tempted to flip him the bird, but too tired to try. Instead, I glowered at him.

"Ah, Harry, you are the very soul of wit," Bob said. I think he actually smiled. "What if it were a homunculus?"

I blinked, my brain waking up a little out of sheer surprise. "A what?"

"A homunculus, Harry," Bob said patiently. "Surely you aren't so far gone you've forgotten what they are?"

A homunculus was a creature that was entirely man-made, a servant that was neither living nor dead created by a wizard to do its master's bidding. Think the Golem of Prague. It was the most famous example I could think of off the top of my head, though I think I could've been mixing homunculi up with something else. My brain was frying from having lost three nights of sleep in a row, so sue me. "How would a homunculus be able to do that to someone?" I asked, scrubbing at my eyes.

"I didn't say that a homunculus did this _to_ him, Harry," Bob said. "I'm saying what if the body Lieutenant Murphy found _was_ the homunculus?"

I frowned, my brain perking up a little more at the possibility of a solvable problem. "Wait, you're saying that the homunculus was sent to the steel mill, and then made to self-destruct?" I asked. "What would be the point?"

Bob shrugged. "It's possible that if a rival wanted to sabotage the reputation of the mill in question, it need only create the impression that the mill was unsafe, or that the facility was used as an area for illegal activities when the mill was shut down for the night. Perhaps there was even corporate sabotage, and the homunculus's self-destruction was merely the icing on the cake. There are any number of reasons as to why it was made to self-destruct there."

I shook my head. "That mill's been closed down for years. It doesn't need anyone to sabotage it. And what about the blood?" I asked, what few brain cells I had starting to spark from the strain. "Homunculi don't actually have blood, unless they're made from corpses in the first place, and that breaks the fifth law."

Bob shrugged. "Perhaps the wizard in question decided to dig up a fresh body and use it. Creating a homunculus doesn't break any of the laws of magic, since you're not dominating the will of another person, nor are you actually bringing the spirit of the dead back to inhabit its original body."

"Kind of a fine line there, Bob," I grumbled.

Bob shrugged. "Wizards have been toeing the line since the laws were first established. Now, considering that you haven't offered any good arguments against the corpse being a homunculus, are you going to get some sleep now?"

The glare I shot him wasn't as intimidating as I thought when I yawned halfway through it. One of the things that our partnership thrived on was the ability for both of us to try to poke as many holes in the other person's argument as possible. Considering that I hadn't been able to come up with a good counter for his homunculus idea, he might've been right about me needing sleep.

"Fine," I growled, "but if I wake up because of that nightmare again, I'm not going to be better off."

"Go to bed, Harry," Bob said firmly. His voice warmed when he added, "Sleep well."

"Night," I managed, stumbling out of the lab. I debated for a second whether or not I could make the trip up to the loft without falling on my ass, but my legs solved my dilemma for me by moving me over to the couch and depositing me there. I was out like a light in moments.

***

Lots of things were happening fast, but there was one thing I knew. It wasn't real. It didn't feel real. Whatever I touched with my bare hands felt rubbery, and when I acted, it was half a second too slow. Time dragged right in front of me, and it wasn't a good feeling.

I was in the lab. I remember that much. I was in the lab, looking around wildly like I was expecting to see something there. When Bob walked through the wall, his baby blues wide, I turned to him.

I shouted at him, but my voice was garbled, like someone had recorded it on tape and was trying to play it for me while the tape player fouled up. I didn't catch all of what I'd said, but it didn't matter. The near-shriek my voice had become was all the meaning I needed.

_I need you safe. I need you safe._ Those four words kept crashing through my mind. _I need you safe._ Safe from who, or what, I didn't know, but all I knew was that Bob wasn't safe, and I had to protect him somehow.

Bob stared at me, and then he was shaking his head, slowly at first, and then picking up speed. I couldn't hear his voice, but his lips, flush and almost red, were shaping the words, "no" and "Harry" over and over again. He didn't want to leave me, not like this.

But the words pounded in my head again, the imperative to keep Bob safe from harm. I reached out to him, and... it was like I was grabbing him. Not physically, but grabbing the stuff his soul was made out of, his entire freaking _being_. Part of my brain had a surprised "huh" moment while the rest of it concentrated on grabbing Bob's soul and stuffing it into his skull like he was a pile of wet clothes that I was stuffing into a garbage bag. As I jammed him in there, he shouted at me, calling my name again, grabbing uselessly at my hands, and the last thing I saw of him was two blue eyes, absolutely terrified.

"Harry?"

I woke up, bolting upright from what I lay on the couch, my breath coming too hard and fast for it to be comfortable.

"Harry!" came Bob's voice again, sharper than just a moment ago, and I jumped, looking up to see him staring at me with alarm. When he saw I was awake, he took a moment to compose himself, and kept up his disapproving-mother act. "Another nightmare?" he asked, sounding fondly exasperated.

For a second, I just stared at him, totally dumbfounded. There he was, whole, unharmed, not looking like he'd been stuffed anywhere, much less his own skull. I lifted a hand to wipe at the sweat on my forehead, only to find that it was shaking. "Stars and stones," I muttered to myself.

"I'll take that as a yes," Bob said, his lips pursing thoughtfully. I wanted to let myself get distracted by them, letting them banish the dream that'd made me wake up in a cold sweat, but Bob wasn't cooperating. "Do you remember anything about it?"

I stared at him again, finding myself debating whether or not I wanted to tell him about this. He used to figure somewhat prominently in my dreams when I was a kid, but having him be the subject of a dream that was less about hormones and more about sheer panic was kind of new for me. Usually, whenever I had any kind of dreams that featured him and panic, I was thinking more about myself, and what he'd think if (or when, given my luck with relationships) he'd found out about the crush thing. This one...

Bob snorted. "I'll take that as another yes, then."

Sometimes, I forget just how perceptive Bob is. I glared at him a little, running both hands through my hair and resisting the urge to grab two handfuls and pull. "It was nothing."

"You're a terrible liar," Bob said.

I couldn't fault him there. "Fine. I had a nightmare," I admitted grumpily. "Are you happy?"

"Hardly," Bob drawled, folding his arms across his chest. "You _do_ realize that you aren't going to get out of telling me, don't you? What happened?"

I shook my head, feeling bits of the dream leave except for the way my voice had sounded. Not just scared, but the kind of bone-deep terrified that chills you to your soul. Bob hadn't looked that composed himself in the dream, if the way he was talking to me while I was panicked was any indication. "It's a stupid dream, Bob."

Bob sighed. I could see him nearly vibrating with tension, and not the good kind. "Harry, we've been over this. You haven't had a good night's sleep in three-- no, four days now. This is the first time that you've actually remembered anything about your dream, so out with it."

One of the things about me and Bob is that we butt heads a lot. Whether it's about a potion, a new magical item I'm testing out, or how to deal with clients, we routinely have an argument. Right now, though, I wasn't in the mood. "What time is it?" I asked, digging the heel of one hand into my eye to see if that would make seeing a bit better. It did, a little.

"You're not going to get out of discussing this," Bob muttered.

"But I can hold it off until I've gotten some caffeine in my system," I shot back. I got up from the couch, not bothering to check the sign since I knew it wouldn't have flipped over in the middle of the night. I padded over to the kitchen and dug a Coke out of the fridge before popping the top and taking a good, long pull. I leaned a hip against the counter, feeling the cold metal in my hand as I watched Bob stride across the room, his legs eating up ground and his narrow hips showing themselves off in the three-piece suit he was wearing--

Eye on the ball, Harry. Don't let yourself get distracted.

Thus mentally fortified, I was ready for the conversational salvo Bob fired at me. "Harry, why are you resisting talking about this? You yourself describe this dream as being 'stupid', though I wonder about your definition at times." He watched me take another swig of Coke. "The last time you had significant dreams, a young boy was in danger from a skinwalker."

I shivered, trying to push the mental image away from me. It had been over a year since that had happened, but I had trouble forgetting just how Melissa had looked when her corpse lay in the middle of my office, the muscles gleaming a sickening, wet red. "Don't remind me."

"Harry," Bob nearly growled, and for a second, I let the voice roll over me, doing the mental equivalent of gathering it up in both hands and rubbing my face all over it, it felt so good. "Someone was in danger then, and if these past four nights have been any indication, someone could be in much worse trouble _now._ If you tell me what you remember, both of us can be better armed against whatever might be lurking in the shadows." He paused for a moment, and then added in a worried voice, "Could it be related to your newly-discovered corpse?"

It was a sign of how much I was running on fumes that I had to remember what corpse he was talking about.

Oh. Right. Mr. Soggy.

I shook my head. "I've been having these dreams since before Mr. Soggy showed, Bob." Bob looked like he was ready to interrupt, but I kept going. "And when Scott showed up, he was still very much alive. There's nothing I can do to help this guy, whoever he was." I stopped for a moment, and eyed Bob. "Wait, what happened to your homunculus theory?"

A grey eyebrow lifted. "I'm pleased to see that your memory of last night is still intact, though how long it took you to recall it is rather disappointing. Perhaps you should go back to sleep."

I shook my head again. I could still feel that dream waiting in the wings, ready to strike the moment I let myself drift off. "I don't think I could fall asleep again."

"Why not lay down and give it a try?" Bob asked, almost gentle. "You never know."

I shook my head again, finishing off the Coke and rinsing it out before tossing it in the trash. "I'll catch up on sleep tonight. So, what about the homunculus theory? Did you do some research last night after I crashed?"

Bob nodded, looking annoyed. "I didn't find much, I'm afraid. You've a fairly extensive library collection, but unfortunately, not much about the creation of non-human life."

"It's a little too close to necromancy for my tastes," I said, my mind flashing back to Kemmler's disciples from a while ago.

"There _is_ a difference," Bob said, his voice softer. I glanced at him, and then shame gave me a kick in the pants. Bob had been a necromancer once upon a time, and he'd done it for love, no less. He'd never told me necromancy was even possible until I'd come across a necromancer with a money-making scheme that involved killing the same guy over and over again and collecting the life insurance.

"Well, yeah, but the whole 'creating life when there was none before' thing creeps me out. Hell's bells, I wouldn't know where to look to get some books about homunculi," I said, shooting him an apologetic glance. "Did any of your former masters ever use them?"

Bob shook his head slowly. "None that I recall off-hand."

I opened my mouth to say something, and then I shot him a surprised look. " 'None that you recall off-hand'? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't part of your geas supposed to turn you into a repository of knowledge?"

"Not entirely, and certainly not on the same level as the Archive itself," Bob said. "I can recite the laws of magic word-for-word, and I can quote passages from any number of texts that I've read before, but I'm nearly a thousand years old, Harry. The human mind was never equipped to deal with the sheer amount of information one can gather in that length of time, let alone be able to regurgitate it on command."

I had to admit, I was intrigued. "Then how does it work? You learn new things, and you end up forgetting the older stuff?"

"More like, I learn new things, but unimportant details slip by," Bob corrected me. "For example, I'm aware that I had three different masters in the 1600s, but I can't recall their names, or what any of them looked like."

"Which explains why you never mention them," When Bob frowned, I said, "I've been wondering why you never waxed nostalgic for the days of yore, or about masters you liked, or whatever. Now I know."

Bob pursed his lip, a bit bemused. "There's been very little about my imprisonment to 'wax nostalgic' about. To some masters, I was a tool to be used when they had specialized in a specific area of magic, to some I was terrible warning about the dangers of black magic, and a threat to keep a very close eye on, and to some...."

To some, I thought to myself, he'd been an irredeemable evil, one that arrogant assholes for guardians could hurt and punish all they wanted because they were the good guys. They _thought_ they were, at any rate. All they'd ever done was hurt someone with a soul, with a mind of their own, someone who couldn't fight back. They were bullies, and, well, let's just say I don't think too highly of _those_ masters.

I shot Bob a look. "But... things are better, right?"

Bob looked genuinely surprised, but before he could say anything, the phone rang. I picked it up.

"Dresden."

"Harry," Murphy said, "I've got another body."

"What?" I asked stupidly. "Was he drowned? Where?"

"Not drowned," Murphy said. "Just get your ass over here." She gave me directions, and I hung up the phone. When I looked up at Bob, he was arching an eyebrow at me.

"I gather from your expression that wasn't good news?" Bob asked.

"It was Murph," I said, setting my mug down and sweeping my coat off from where it was draped on the staircase. I shrugged it on. "She's got another body."

Bob frowned, and then nodded. "I'll see what else there might be in the books." He paused before adding. "Be careful."

"Aren't I always?" I asked.

Bob looked less than impressed.

***

Over the years, Murphy has called me out to all kinds of crime scenes, from zoos to hotel rooms to I can't remember what else. Anytime that Murph and I aren't out having a drink, I'm meeting her at a crime scene.

This time, it was a diner. It wasn't one that I recognized off-hand, since I tend to stick to Mac's when I have the cash, but it looked like it would've been a good place to grab a cup of joe at a decent price.

The still-smoking husk of a person in the middle of the scorched tiled floor did cut down on the decor a little.

The ID tag clipped to my jacket got me past the growing crowd and the yellow police tape, and when I found Murphy inside, she didn't look happy.

"Hey, Murph." I glanced down at Mr. Crispy Mark II, and then back up at her again. "Did you miss me?"

Murphy snorted through her nose. "You look like hell."

"Really? I must be having a good hair day." I looked down at the corpse again. "What's the story?"

"Witnesses say that this guy walked in, started clawing at his skin, screaming about cockroaches, and then he set himself on fire." Murphy said, looking down at the corpse and wrinkling her nose.

"Um, I like smoking corpses as much as the next guy," I said, "but why call me in on this one? Isn't it fairly open and shut?"

"There's no trace of accelerant, what little we could find on him didn't include a flame-thrower or even a lighter, and according to witnesses, he was--" She flipped open her notebook and read aloud, "--'chanting in some weird language'."

I shrugged. "Some crackpot who thought he could do magic," I explained easily enough.

Murphy arched an eyebrow. "One of the waitresses also said that before he came in, he'd been arguing with a guy outside."

"What'd he look like?" I asked. "Might be your trigger-man, if he was involved with this."

She didn't look impressed, but read off the description from her notebook. "Tall, black, medium build, short hair, dark brown three-piece suit, and he looked like he'd been carrying something on his side."

"Something?" Just from the description so far, it was starting to sound uncomfortably like Morgan. I was really hoping she wouldn't say what I thought she was going to say.

"Some say it looked like a cane, others think it was a sword."

She said it. Hell's bells.

I grinned, trying to pass it off as something stupid. "A sword? C'mon, Murph, who carries a sword around nowadays?"

"I don't know, Harry," she said patiently. "You tell me."

I'd already managed to avoid telling her about the Wardens and the High Council a bunch of times. It was going to take a lot more than Mr. Crispy the Second to make me spill my guts about everything I'd been keeping from her since we started working together.

I shrugged. "Could be some nut from those historical re-enactment groups," I said. I had to take a moment and mentally push the nausea back from my mind before I knelt down and looked over Mr. Crispy, up close and personal.

The difference between the first burned corpse that I'd dealt with and this one was that the first had been a demon's minion who'd been blasted by a massive amount of fire. I mean, from the waist up, the ex-minion I'd seen had been twisted and black, but his legs and feet had been fine, completely untouched. I know because I still remembered how pristine the first corpse's pants had looked to this day.

This guy, though... It looked like he'd been a hollowed-out tree trunk, and someone had set a fire _inside_ of him. There was no part of his body that had gone unscathed, and the heat from it alone had to have been freaking intense for it to twist and mangle the corpse into a charred pretzel. If Murphy hadn't told me this had been a man when he was alive, I wouldn't have been able to tell from just looking at him. Closing my eyes for a moment, I reached out with my other senses, trying to get a read on any residual magic in the area. Unlike the buzzing sensation that I'd gotten the night before, it felt like I was touching a wire with current running through it, a burr against my skin that jangled against my nerves.

"Sure, Harry," Murphy said, "pull the other one while you're at it." She looked at the corpse, and then back at me. "Don't you think it's weird that not twenty-four hours after we find a guy drowned on dry land, we find a guy who burned alive inside of a diner?"

"Pretty weird," I grunted, getting to my feet and dusting my hands off on my jeans. I could see the question on her lips, so I cut her off before she could ask. "And no, I don't have any answers yet as to how Mr. Soggy drowned. As soon as I know something, I'll call you."

"Make it sooner than later, will you?" Murphy said. "A drowned guy in a closed steel mill is one thing, but as soon as this hits the papers, Fairweather's going to be on my ass to get it solved, and fast."

City Police Commissioner Howard Fairweather had been on Murphy's ass since the first time she'd first caught an 'unusual' case and had called me in to consult. Ever since then, Murphy had also been having trouble getting promotions, even though she'd been up for it twice since I've known her. And she'd never told me about it, but she'd also been getting the short end of the stick in terms of cases other departments didn't want to deal with.

"Murph, I want to help, but I really don't know what I can do with this one," I said. "You could just have a case of spontaneous combustion on your hands."

Murphy stared at me. "Spontaneous combustion."

"There's been cases of it happening, y'know, spontaneously." I shrugged. "If the guy actually had some magical talent before he went up, he could've managed it." I pointed at the body. "I mean, look at him. He burned so hot that he's not even recognizable as _human_ anymore."

"And yet, the rest of the place is untouched," Murphy finished for me, sounding annoyed. "I know that, Harry. The sprinklers didn't go off, even though they're up to code. And like I said before, it's weird, and you're the resident expert on 'weird'."

"Okay, I'll give you that this guy dying the way he did is weird," I admitted, "but where's the crime? It's not like you can arrest him for committing suicide."

"What about the guy he was arguing with? Didn't you just say that this guy could be the trigger-man? What was that kind of magic you told me about, the kind you can do long-distance with a voodoo doll? Thaumaturgy?" she asked. "He could've done it that way."

There were times that I wished I weren't so open with the information that I gave to Murphy whenever she hired me. Then again, that was kind of the point of her hiring me to consult in the first place. My relationship with the Chicago police, and Murphy in particular, has always been a balancing act between giving Murphy just enough information for her to be able to close cases, or at least get some sense of closure when mortal law wouldn't be able to punish the guilty, and not enough information to get her killed by the High Council. "I don't think he was your guy."

"What's changed in the five minutes we've been talking, Harry?" Murphy's eyes narrowed suddenly, and she looked at me steadily without meeting my gaze. It's interesting how she can do that, actually. "You know the guy my vic was arguing with, don't you."

"I didn't say that," I said quickly.

Murphy snorted. "Don't even try it, Harry. You looked like you recognized him from the description I gave you. Who is he?"

"He's kind of in the same field, but he has a different specialty," I said. I wasn't technically lying, since Wardening tends to be more law enforcement than consulting work.

Her brown eyes flashed, and she glared at me. "Harry. What is his name?"

I shook my head. "Can't tell you. Trade secret."

"If he's a tax-paying citizen of Chicago, it's not going to be much of a secret, and all you're doing is delaying the inevitable," Murphy said flatly. "Help me out here, Harry."

"I'm serious, Murphy," I said. "Yeah, I know him, but he wouldn't have done this. He's so morally uptight that he wouldn't have used thaumaturgy on his worst enemy." What I conveniently left out was that Morgan had a big, shiny sword that he could use to remove someone's head from their neck if he got within range. I mean, why use up all of your energy throwing spells around when you can just take care of a problem with one quick swing? "I've had plenty of run-ins with him; he doesn't tolerate people so much as gently bending the rules."

"Sounds like my kind of guy." Murphy folded her arms across her chest. "If you're not going to tell me who he is, how about telling me where I can find him?"

I sighed heavily. "Murph."

"No, Harry. If someone's hurting people in my city, I want it to stop. One guy drowned in a steel mill and another setting himself on fire within twenty-four hours of each other doesn't sound right. If this guy knows anything about it, I want to ask him questions."

"I know you do, but that's not how he operates," I said. "Hell, he could be investigating what's going on too, including what happened to this guy--" I waved a hand at the corpse. "I don't know where to find him, but how about I go talk to him, and ask him to tell me what he knows? I'll share anything I get out of him, scout's honor."

Murphy stared at me for a long moment, and sighed heavily. "Fine. But I want everything."

I nodded. "You got it."

"And I still want what could've killed my drowner last night."

I nodded again. "I know. You'll get it as soon as I figure it out."

It didn't take me long to get back to my place, and when I got there, I headed straight for the phone.

Morgan isn't too hard to get a hold of, especially for me. Ever since I killed my uncle with black magic almost six years ago, I'd been put under an accelerated form of probation known as the Doom of Damocles. If I break any of the seven laws of magic, there's no trial. I'm just dead. And since Morgan's the Warden assigned to Chicago, he's basically my parole officer. If I see signs of black magic, I get in touch with him. I've done it a few times already, but I try not to make a habit of it. He doesn't like me all that much, and the feeling's mutual.

I tried the phone number that I keep in my wallet, and after giving the password to the Warden on the other end, I was surprised to learn that Morgan wasn't available. Nobody spends their life sitting by the phone, sure, but nine times out of ten, Morgan was usually there. Maybe I'd just caught him on that tenth time.

With two bodies headed for the morgue that died under extremely weird circumstances, I had a feeling that not being able to get in touch with Morgan was a bad thing.

Bob emerged from the wall that divided the lab from my office area, looking curious as he walked over to stand next to me. "Ah, there you are. I had been wondering what was taking you so long. What sort of new corpse does the lieutenant have now?"

"Somebody who spontaneously combusted, apparently," I said. After explaining the situation, Bob's eyes narrowed.

"One who died by water, and another by fire," Bob murmured. "Whoever this killer is, he's certainly not risking identification through how he kills his victims."

I shook my head. "The magical signature felt different. It's possible these two deaths aren't linked."

Bob arched an eyebrow at me. "Two deaths within twenty-four hours of each other is hardly coincidence, Harry. Have either of the victims been identified yet?"

I shook my head. "Murphy didn't tell me that the drowner'd been ID'd, and the burned guy didn't even look human when I saw him."

Bob grimaced. "It will take some time, then. Who were you calling when you came in?"

"I _was_ trying to get in touch with Morgan," I said. "But he wasn't there."

"He could be doing other work for the Wardens," Bob suggested. "Perhaps even an assignment? It's not unusual for him to be out of the office."

"Yeah, but he's usually in some kind of contact." I shook my head. "I don't like it. I can't put my finger on it, but something screwy's going on."

***

For the next couple of hours, I hit the books, ate some leftover pizza that Bob suspected of having grown mold while inside of my refrigerator (it hadn't), and avoided sleep as much as possible. Given how vividly I remembered how that burned corpse looked in the diner, I wasn't interested in playing Russian Roulette with my subconscious and coming up with a doozy of a nightmare on top of the one that I'd been having lately. I might've been running on fumes, but it was better to be tired than to be scared of something I couldn't remember entirely and dead tired.

As I worked, I had Bob remind me to call Morgan on the hour every hour. The guy I kept talking to insisted that Morgan's disappearance wasn't that strange, but after the sixth time I called, the guy on the other end had actually stopped getting annoyed at me, and started to sound a little worried. Morgan always checked in, and after a bit of very loud fast-talking, I found out that Morgan wasn't out on an assignment, or stuck in meetings.

After I hung up the phone that time, I turned to find Bob frowning at me. "I assume Morgan's still out of contact?"

I nodded grimly. "Even the guys in the home office are getting worried. The one time Morgan being a tight-ass about protocol is actually helpful." I headed for the lab.

"What are you planning on doing?" Bob asked, walking through the wall and looking at me with a curious frown.

I opened one of the cabinets built into my lab table and pulled out a plastic bin, setting it down on top of the Greek mythology book that I'd forgotten to put away, and pulled out shards of a translucent, gold-colored crystal. Morgan and I had broken it together with a whole lot of magical energy a few months ago when my house had been dragged to the other side by Ancient Mai. And if I was right, I'd be able to use that energy in a tracking spell.

"Tracking spell," I grunted, pulling out a good-sized chunk a little smaller than my fist, and readied one of my little pots of tracking-spell mud, lighting the burner.

Bob frowned. "Is that the crystal you broke trying to escape the darkness?"

I nodded. "If I'm right, I can use this to track Morgan using his magic."

Bob shook his head. "The idea is sound, but you're not going to be able to do it that way."

I looked up. "What do you mean?"

"Tracking spells use one item that the person owned or possessed for a time," he explained. "The crystal is saturated with your magic as well as Morgan's. You're going to confuse the tracking crystal if you try to use your usual tracking spell to find him."

"Okay, so how do I do this?" I asked.

"Polarization," Bob said. "Remember how I said that adding any of your own essence to the spell would make it useless?"

I nodded. "So, this time, I'm going to add it?"

Bob nodded. "There are two principles embedded in the crystal you're using, intertwined in such a way that you can't separate them by simply cutting the crystal in half. In this instance, you're going to use the spell preparation to separate them for you. First, begin the mixture like you would a typical tracking spell, but instead of dipping the entire tracking crystal in, just dip one end of it."

I followed his instructions, and after I dipped in one end -- which was tricky, since touching the crystal itself during the process tends to contaminate the spell's effectiveness -- I looked up at Bob. "All right, what's next?"

Bob stopped his pacing to stand in front of me, his hands held behind his back as he leaned forward to look at the pot and the crystal. "Now, you're going to super-saturate the tracking solution."

I got where he was going with this. "Because my energy mixed with Morgan's is still there, but with more of my energy, one end will keep pointing at me, and then other--"

"--Will point at Morgan," Bob said, grinning. I had to looked away after a second, because Bob has a really nice smile. Genuinely happy, and definitely with a tinge of pride. The one-two combination of me making him proud, and him getting to participate in spellwork always makes for a happy Bob. And if I just happen to do more of my spellwork in the lab where Bob can watch, well, it's a victimless hobby.

I held my right hand over the little ceramic pot and closed my eyes. Concentrating on the image I wanted, I murmured, " _Perfuseo._ " I felt the magical energy center in my palm, and then flow downward, slowly draining out of my hand like water through a colander. When I opened my eyes, a gentle blue-white light fell into the tracking solution like a steady rain.

"A little more," Bob murmured, his eyes intent on the mud. Seeing the blue-white light reflected in his eyes made them look almost luminous, and when he glanced up at me, they were like pale sapphires, brilliant and captivating. "It's ready."

I blinked, and then stopped concentrating on the spell, looking down at the contents of the little pot, still gently glowing blue. I picked up the tracking crystal again, and carefully dipped the other end into the mixture, slowly swirling it around in the muddy-looking solution before lifting it up.

Bob smiled again, and nodded once. "Activate the spell, and you're done."

I nodded. "Thanks, Bob."

"My pleasure."

Tracking crystal in hand, I grabbed my hoodie and my staff, and headed out to find Morgan.

***

It had been around seven in the morning when I'd finished the tracking spell preparations, and after one last call to Morgan's people to see if he'd showed -- he hadn't -- I got in the Jeep and hit the road.

Whenever I use a tracking spell to find something, it usually doesn't take that long, maybe an hour tops. I list finding lost articles as a specialty because I've had a lot of practice using the spell over the years. So, when I'd driven for four hours all over the city, on highways and all around downtown, I was pretty confused. It was as though the tracking spell had been a dog on the scent a few times, but it kept losing it somehow. Part of me was tempted to go back home and rework the spell, see if it had fouled up somehow despite Bob's seal of approval, but I pulled out the crystal again, concentrating on Morgan again. If I didn't find him within the next hour, I told myself, I would go back to the lab and rework it.

As I approached one neighborhood in particular close to the projects, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but there was a change in the air when I paid attention to the tracking crystal. Something made it start moving slow and steady, the end with more of Morgan's magic suddenly catching something solid.

I turned a corner, and then felt a sense of... wrongness. There was something wrong, and my instincts were telling me that I should turn the Jeep around and step on the gas. Ignoring the bone-deep tension building up inside me, I kept moving forward through the suddenly sluggish traffic, uniformed officers redirecting cars away from what looked like a perfectly good, if completely empty street. I saw the crystal swivel to point down the deserted street. Great.

Pulling over into the nearest available spot on the curb, right in front of a fire hydrant no less, I turned the Jeep off and got out, watching the crystal, and playing Frogger with some slow-moving cars. It took a few blocks, the sense of foreboding growing in the pit of my stomach, and then I found the crystal definitively pointed at one specific building.

It was an apartment building, and it looked like it'd been built within the past few years. It was also visibly leaning over the street.

Police black-and-whites were holding crowds of people back, at least a block or two away from the leaning building, large police barriers making sure that the more ambitious gawkers didn't sneak by the cops. Making my way through the crowd, I held up the crystal again for confirmation, and saw that it was still pointing at the leaning building.

"Hell's bells, Morgan," I muttered to myself. "You'd better be rescuing a baby or something."

The sense of wrongness hadn't faded, and while I could have just as easily chalked it up to a building about to fall in the middle of Chicago, there was something more than that. It felt like something was building up somehow. I could hear something buzzing in my ears like a hive of bees. The sound got louder and louder.

I heard a single human scream of pure frustration coming from inside the building, and the crystal jerked in my hand.

"Jesus, I hope those guys get that nutjob out of there soon," one young man muttered next to me.

I turned to him, surprised. "What do you mean?"

The young man, a kid who sported enough piercings on his face to make walking near magnets a safety hazard, looked up at me. "One of the cops saw this black guy and tried to talk to him, but he was going nuts or something. He starts heading inside, and then she tries to stop him because he's past the barricade, but he starts yelling and grabs her."

The guy's story attracted more attention from the crowd around us. "Yeah," a young woman added, nodding. "I saw that. They were wrestling, and then he went inside the building. She followed him in, and she's been in there for a while, trying to get him out again."

"Hell's bells," I swore under my breath before raising my voice. I shoved my way through the crowd, saying excuse me to just about everybody before making it to the barricade, and one overweight officer. I was in the process of throwing one leg over when he tried to stop me.

"Hey, buddy, don't you know the building's about to come down?" he demanded, frowning and holding up a hand. "Stay back."

"I'm Harry Dresden. Murphy at the 2-7 knows me," I grunted, throwing my other leg over. "I need to get inside that building."

"The building's coming down," he said slowly, as if I were too stupid to know what was good for me. Hell, for all I knew, he was right. Still, that building was about to come down, and while Morgan could shield himself and escape unscathed, whoever was with him trying to get him out didn't have that luxury.

Just then, a tremor shook hard enough to make me wobble where I stood, and then the building swayed drunkenly. For a second, I stupidly thought that it might not tip over, but the tremor increased, and in a roar of concrete and steel like a wounded animal screaming, the building started leaning over like a drunk who thinks they're about to hit the wall, but misjudged the distance.

Murphy ran out of the building. "It's coming down!" she shouted, waving her arms in a warding gesture. "Get everyone back! Now!"

There was another tremor, this one even harder this time, and I had to hold my hands out for balance. The building leaned further and further over the street, the cops scattering out of its way seconds before it finally gave up the ghost and crash-landed, the upper floors landing on an office building across the street. Concrete and metal screamed as the two buildings scraped against each other, and finally, amidst the shouts and some "oohs" from the crowd, the high-rise hit the street, sending up clouds of dust and debris. I had winced and used my hoodie to cover my face while it fell, and when the roaring had stopped, I lifted my head and looked around slowly.

The tension in my gut didn't ease. Something was still very wrong.

The crystal in my hand jerked, but remained stubbornly pointing at the remains of the building.

"Well, that answers one question," I muttered to myself, dusting off my pants and having little effect before jogging forward, toward the wreckage. A good shield spell can take a lot of punishment, but they usually weren't designed to withstand buildings falling on top of the person they were designed to protect. Morgan was still in the rubble, and while the tracking crystal can find people, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be alive when I find them.

Murphy made a beeline for me as I hurried. "Harry! What the hell are you doing here?"

"Looking for somebody," I said, holding up the tracking crystal by way of explanation.

"If it's the guy you were going to get in touch with, he resisted arrest and went inside before it came down," Murphy grunted, not looking pleased. "He was still inside when I came out. If he's not dead, he's going to wish he was."

I shrugged. "He knows a few tricks for getting out of trouble."

"Harry, stop," Murphy said firmly.

"Murphy, he's still in there," I told her. "I may not like the guy, but he's still alive, and he needs to get out of there before the trick he's using to keep himself alive wears off."

Murphy frowned at me, and then shook her head. "Harry, he wouldn't have survived being inside. No one would have."

I shook my head. "Don't count him out. Let me help him."

"It's too dangerous," she said, gently this time. "More of the rubble could shift, and then you'd be trapped in there too, if you aren't crushed by any debris that hasn't finished falling yet. Let the paramedics handle this. They've been on standby since the building started leaning earlier."

As I watched, a team of paramedics raced over to where the ground floor used to be, two of them carrying the gurney as they picked their way over the rubble while the third ran ahead of them, looking at Murphy. Murphy pointed them where to go, and they made their way over.

I turned to Murphy. "Murphy--"

"No, Harry," she said. "I'll arrest you if I have to, but you're not getting anywhere near this, not until it's been cleared."

We looked at each other, her glaring up at me without meeting my gaze, and me looking down at her. She wouldn't budge. She didn't completely believe that I could do half the stuff I could, and she was trying to keep me back for my own good. That, and she had at least ten other cops around, including Kirmani, that she could sic on me if she felt she needed backup.

Realizing that discretion was the better part of valor -- and feeling fairly sure that they'd take Morgan to the hospital -- I raised my hands in surrender and backed off. "Okay, okay. You win."

"I win?" Murphy frowned up at me skeptically.

"You win," I confirmed. "Backing off now. Go do what you need to do, and good luck."

Murphy glared at me a bit more, as if that were going to get me to spill my guts, but when I didn't offer up anymore secrets of the trade, she nodded slowly and turned back to the scene. I, on the other hand, turned around and headed back for my car.

On my way to the hospital, I swung by a pay phone and deposited a quarter, managing to get in touch with Morgan's co-workers. After some yelled conversation that got me some curious looks from people walking by, I told them that I'd found Morgan, and then hung up. I neglected to tell them that I knew where he was going, mainly because I had questions to ask him, since he'd been seen at one of the crime scenes, and I didn't want the Wardens to pull a disappearing act with him before I could get a chance to ask.

With the traffic redirected from that one street, it took a little longer than usual to get out of that part of town, but the rest of the way to the hospital was relatively smooth sailing. I got a cup of coffee while I waited, breaking my last ten dollar bill and trying not to think about how many bills I was going to be late paying this month, and when the ambulance showed up, and a gurney carrying Morgan hustled inside, I headed inside as well, making a beeline for the waiting room.

It took a few more hours before I got to see Morgan, and after dodging around areas where there were people hooked up to life support, I made it to his room.

Morgan actually looked fairly decent, considering that a building had fallen on top of him a few hours before. What I could see of him not covered by the flimsy hospital gown or the bedsheets was whole and unmarked, the only evidence that he'd been injured at all being one leg that was already in a cast. In sleep, he looked haunted, as weird as that sounds, his face lined with tension.

His eyes snapped open, and after he glanced around at parts of the ceiling, he zeroed in on me. I made sure to keep my gaze averted, but Morgan seemed insistent on trying to look into my eyes. It was... pretty damn unusual, considering that he usually made sure not to meet my gaze for more than a second or two.

"Morgan?" I asked, not quite sure what to say. Since that time when we were trapped in my house with two dragons, only one of them vaguely friendly to us, we'd ended up being a bit friendlier to each other, but not by much. I guess you could say that the tension's diminished some, but we still walk carefully around each other. So, as stupid as it sounded, I went ahead and asked the typical question. "How are you doing?"

"Dresden." He said my name like he was drowning. "You need to get out."

"Get out?" I frowned, feeling my shoulders tense up. "Why? I just got here."

"The darkness." He gulped, his eyes widening a little. "It's still closing in. It's infecting everything."

"Darkness?" I looked around, more than a little confused. "Morgan, it's the middle of the day. There's no darkness here."

"Still here." He shook his head and gulped again. "It's still here." He looked like he was trying to get out of bed, but when he moved, his eyes fluttered closed, and he sagged back against the pillows, his skin a sharp contrast with the white sheets. I moved forward, not sure what to do, but knowing that Morgan going unconscious in the middle of a conversation wasn't normal.

"Excuse me, sir?"

I yelped and jumped maybe about a foot before I turned around and found a plump, grey-haired orderly standing at the door. She swept in and made a beeline for Morgan, checking his pulse before peeling back an eyelid. When she finished examining him, she looked up at me. "Sir?" she repeated. "I don't know who you are, but you're going to have to leave. The patient needs his rest."

"His name's Donald Morgan," I said. I don't know why I felt the need to correct her. I probably shouldn't have, since it would mean that Morgan had a medical file with the hospital, but it was better than nothing.

She arched an eyebrow. "He was brought in with no ID, so we didn't have a name to call him. Thank you. Now, if you'll please wait in the visitor's area, the doctor still needs to run more tests to see if there's anything else that's wrong with him. The x-ray machine hasn't been cooperating."

Wizards tend to be a walking Murphy's Law when it comes to machines -- the more delicate the equipment, the more likely it is to foul up on us -- which makes going to hospitals to get checked out especially time-consuming.

I nodded. "When he wakes up and starts talking, can you have him call this number?" I asked, offering her my business card.

She accepted it, and when she saw what was printed on it, her eyebrows rose, and she gave me a disapproving look. "I highly doubt Mr. Morgan needs someone to pull rabbits out of a hat for him."

I set my jaw and tried to smile at her. I'm not sure how well I succeeded. "He's in the same line of work. And it's important that he gets in touch with me."

She snorted once, but I saw her accept the card and place it on the table next to Morgan's bed. "We'll see if he's up for much of anything after the tests are finished."

"Thanks," I said. And with that, I went home, and crashed face-first into bed.

***

I didn't sleep well that night, if I managed to get any sleep at all.

In between half-remembered dreams of terrified blue-green eyes and overwhelming fear, I stared up uselessly at the ceiling of my loft, the puzzle of the deaths turning over and over in my mind, the details getting jumbled together. I really should've gotten out of bed and got things straight in my head, but I was too tired. Too tired to actually sleep, too tired to think. Great.

Part of me just wanted to pass out, right then and there, and not wake up for a week. I was tired enough to do it, but Murphy needed my help, and call me a chauvinist, but I can't turn my back on a lady in distress. My sense of chivalry is more of a knee-jerk reaction, and when it hears about a fair damsel, it kicks into overdrive. The only problem was, I had no freaking clue what was going on.

Finally giving up the ghost when I saw sunlight creep up the walls of my bedroom, I padded downstairs just in time to get startled by the phone ringing. A quick glance at the wind-up clock nearby said that it was just after eight.

"Dresden," I said.

"Where is he?" Murphy demanded.

"Huh?" I said intelligently. I'm not that thrilling a conversationalist when I wake up, especially after the restless night I just had.

"The guy who had the building fall on him," she explained impatiently. There was the sound of her checking something in the little notebook she carried with her. "Donald Morgan. I came to see if he'd be more lucid this time, but the hospital staff said he'd been signed out against medical advice before shift change this morning. Now, I repeat, where is he?"

"I don't know," I said honestly, wiping my face with the hand not holding the phone. I heard a snort on the other end, to which I responded, "Seriously, Murphy, I just woke up."

Murphy's grunt was grudging this time. "Do you know an Amber Swensen?"

I blinked. "No. Who's that?"

Realization hit me exactly two seconds later. Amber. She'd been the one junior Warden who'd survived the dragon trapped in my house, masquerading as Murphy. If Amber had signed Morgan out of the hospital, then the Wardens had him. At least that was one less thing to worry about, even if it did make talking to Morgan harder. I didn't know too much about the Wardens, but I knew that they were like the cops -- they looked after their own. And apparently, whenever a Warden had checked into the hospital, they spirited him or her away in the dead of night. Maybe it was a good thing that my brain hadn't been firing on all cylinders just then, because Murphy didn't pick up on the lie I'd just told her.

"Great," she muttered. "Wonderful. I have two bodies on my hands, and my only potential suspect on one of them just went up in smoke." A sudden, irritated bleep interrupted her, and then she said, "Hang on. I've got another call." There was another bleep, and then the line went dead.

I hung up the phone, heading for the fridge. Phones have a tendency to foul up around wizards, just like any other high-tech stuff. Hell, my answering machine worked two times out of ten, and that was on a good day. Since Murphy knew about my ongoing battle against technology, she'd know it wasn't deliberate, and if it was really important, she'd get back to me.

I dug around in the fridge, getting myself a glass of milk, and pondering the concept of breakfast. When I righted myself, I saw Bob walk through the wall separating the living area from the lab, and approach me like a man on a mission. Since I was still running on fumes sleep-wise, I went ahead and let myself appreciate the view. "Hey, Bob. What's up?"

"No much in terms of research, I'm afraid," Bob replied. He stopped for a moment and looked at me. "Harry? Are you all right? You look terrible."

"You should see the other guy," I said, rubbing my face again in an effort to wake up further.

"If you'd been in a fight yesterday, it would certainly explain why you came home covered in dust and fell into bed," Bob said. He was trying to sound unconcerned, but the look in his eyes told me that I'd worried him. I brought him up to speed while I made breakfast, and when I was shoveling bites of fried egg into my mouth, Bob frowned curiously.

"And Morgan was insisting that darkness surrounded him still?" Bob narrowed his eyes, one of his thumbs starting to worry at the amber ring he wore on his left pinkie.

I nodded, chewing a few more times before swallowing. "I'm wondering if somebody got to him? Maybe did a little mind magic after he left Mr. Crispy at the diner?"

Bob considered that for a moment, and then shook his head. "Magics affecting the mind usually have a purpose behind them, whether it be to force the victim to action or inaction. Creating the impression that Morgan was surrounded by darkness that did not actually blind him would have been pointless."

"Unless," I said slowly, a thought coming to me. "Morgan saw something he shouldn't have, something that somebody didn't want him to see." I sipped some milk. "Could be that the illusion is punishment, or a way to try to get him to go nuts so that he can't tell anyone about whatever he saw."

Bob looked doubtful. "I wouldn't be too sure, Harry. From what you described, Morgan was acting irrationally before he entered the building that was about to collapse, correct?" At my nod, he continued. "To ensure that the spell wouldn't be interrupted, the wizard would have to maintain line of sight with Morgan, and no one else was at that scene except for Lieutenant Murphy. And you've already established that she doesn't have the gift."

"Thaumaturgy doesn't need line of sight," I pointed out.

"Not everything Dark is thaumaturgical, Harry," Bob said patiently. "And in this case, Morgan isn't seeing black smoke. He's seeing darkness." He frowned a little, something occurring to him. "Dark magical energies, perhaps?"

I tried to think of a counter to that, but I couldn't. I shook my head with a sigh. "I don't know. Whatever he's seeing, Morgan got spirited away by the Wardens. If I don't get to him soon to ask him what he was doing with Mr. Crispy, I might as well let Murphy arrest me for obstruction."

Bob pursed his lips. "It's unlikely that the Wardens would let you speak to him, especially if they wished to heal Morgan's injuries without interference."

I finished my food and put the plate in the sink. "They'll just give me the run-around anyway," I said, shaking my head.

"Then what do you propose to do?" Bob asked, frowning at me.

"Research," I said, rinsing out the glass and setting it on top of the plate. Wiping my hands on my pants, I turned back to Bob. "Whatever the hell is going on just took out a Warden, Bob. I need to figure out what's happening, and I need to know as quickly as possible."

***

A few hours, damn near half of my collection on magical attacks, and one serious case of eyestrain later, I was sagging onto my lab table, resting my forehead on my folded arms gingerly as a headache started behind my right eyeball.

Bob pulled his head out of one bookcase, frowning a little as he thought. When I lifted my head to glance over at him, he shook his head. "Nothing here."

I sighed, and put my head back down. _Think, Harry, think,_ I told myself sternly.

"There's got to be something I'm missing here..." I muttered.

Bob opened his mouth to say something, and I heard the bell chime over the front door, and Bob nodded once. "I'll see if I can find anything else."

I frowned, looking at the stacks of books that had slowly taken over my lab table. I didn't like doing it, but I nodded. "Be back in a bit. If you find something, just shout. We can play the assistant angle if it's a customer."

Bob nodded again, and resolutely stuck his head back into the bookcase he'd been slowly reading through. I managed to open the steel door and slip out before I heard someone moving slowly around the storefront.

"Harry?" Murphy called, her voice sounding tense.

I frowned, walking down the corridor to the storefront to find Murphy standing uncertainly on the rug in front of the door, looking around. "Murphy?"

Her eyes locked onto my face without meeting my gaze for more than a second. "There you are," she said, closing her cell phone and setting it down on the corner of my desk. "I tried calling a couple times, but I kept getting the machine."

"I've been busy." When she moved closer, I could see she was tense, the kind of tense that usually meant that Murphy was ready to pull her gun. "Murph? You okay?"

"Fine," she snapped reflexively. As much as I have a knee-jerk reaction to damsels in distress and women in general, Murphy has a need to prove that she can stand on her own two feet without anybody's help. Sometimes, it worked in her favor -- you don't get to be a police lieutenant if the guys in command see you scared. Other times... not so much.

I frowned. "Really? Because you don't look it."

"You're one to talk, Harry," she said, a smile tugging at her lips. "Have you slept at all?"

I shook my head. "It's my personal cure for visions of drowners and people fried to a crisp," I said. "You should try it sometime. I'm making friends with all the roaches and everything."

Murphy shuddered a little, wrinkling her cute little nose a little. "Now I know you've lost it." After a moment, her smile slipped. "Harry, I... I think something's happening to me."

I blinked, sobering. "What do you mean?"

"I keep..." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. "This is going to sound weird, but... I can't stop thinking about my daughter."

If I'd been expecting Murphy to say something, that wasn't it. "Anna?"

She nodded. "It's... it's like I need to talk to her, to know she's safe. I mean, this has happened a couple times before, but it's... I don't know. It's important now."

"You've been seeing a lot of weird things these past couple of days," I said. "It makes sense that you'd want to make sure your family's safe. It's okay."

"It's not just that, though." Murphy shook her head. "For the past couple of hours, I've been seeing this little girl. She's mostly been at the corner of my eye, and when I try to look at her, she disappears. And she looks so much like Anna. I..." She frowned, looking small and worried. "Am I going crazy, Harry? Is this more of what happened with Boone?"

Boone had been a two-bit criminal who'd been released from prison, only to gain immortality through an ancient Egyptian tablet. During the whole mess, Murphy had been possessed by Boone's soul. It had taken her months to get over it, and there were still times when she looked... not quite whole.

"I don't think so, Murph. In fact," I said, frowning a little. It was a bit of a mental leap, but considering who Morgan was, my gut was telling me I was on the right track. I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. "I think we're getting closer to whoever's doing this. Here, how about I close up shop, you can sack out on my couch, and when you've gotten some sleep, we can put our heads together."

Murphy shook her head again. "I can't. The captain's breathing down my neck, demanding results. The sooner I can report to him, the better."

"Okay, but be careful, huh?" I said, frowning. I squeezed her shoulder for emphasis, and for a moment, I thought I felt her shoulder get a little warm under my hand. "You look beat."

She looked up at me, avoiding my eyes, and smiled a little. "Yes, Dad. I'll be fine. Take care of yourself." She turned around and headed out the door, the bell over the door jangling.

I watched her go, and when I glanced at the desk, I saw her cell phone, lying innocently next to the Chinese dragon sculpture I'd gotten years ago at a garage sale. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at, but when I did, I scooped it up, mentally composing my apology for blowing up her cell phone as I followed her out. I was about to catch up with her when she started crossing the street.

Right into the path of an oncoming car.

"Murphy!" I shouted, lunging for her. By some miracle, I managed to grab her arm and yank her backwards, causing her to stumble into me. I wobbled a bit, but managed to keep my feet as the car screamed past us, blowing its horn in two irritated beeps before disappearing from view. I righted Murphy and looked at her. "Stars and stones, some people. You okay?"

Murphy's eyes were wide, but after a few deep breaths, she nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Murph?" I said, a bit confused. She'd nearly gotten hit by a car, and last I checked, that wasn't something you just shrugged off.

Murphy shook her head. "No, really. I'm okay. Just a bit rattled."

I nodded slowly. "You were about to leave your cell phone." I offered her the phone.

"Thanks," she said, taking the phone from me and sliding it into her coat pocket.

"Look, Murphy, are you sure you're all right? You can stay a little while. I can get you some water or something, give you a chance to calm down a little."

Murphy sighed, and shook her head. "I wish I could, but I really need to get going. See you tomorrow." She stepped away from me, and after quadruple-checking that no more cars were coming from either side, she stepped out into the road. I watched her well after she got to the other side and into her unmarked car, wondering if maybe I was going nuts myself. But, I shook my head and headed back inside.

Crazy or not, people still needed my help.

I closed the door when I got inside, double-checking that the sign was flipped over to deter any would-be customers and locking it.

"Harry?" Bob called. A second later, he walked through the wall, raising grey eyebrows at me. "Who was that just now?"

"Murphy," I said. I heard a faint buzzing noise, but when I looked around, I couldn't see anything that could've been causing it. "I think the case's getting to her."

"Oh?" Bob looked curious. When I finished explaining, he looked even more surprised. "Oh, dear."

"I tried to get her to stay, but you know what she's like," I grunted. "Did you find anything useful?"

Bob shook his head. "No, but I'll keep digging." He frowned at me for a long moment, and then added, "Perhaps, you should rest. I can continue working."

I frowned. "Aren't you always saying that two heads are better than one?" I asked.

Bob sighed. "You usually don't look as though you've been run over by a car. Go rest, or I'll start singing funeral Masses."

"Oh, no, anything but that," I deadpanned, pretending to clutch at my heart.

"Would you rather I..." He paused for a moment, and then said, "Complained to you that the rent is due next week, and that you really should be asking Lieutenant Murphy for an advance so that you don't have to pay late fees again?"

This time, I glowered at him. Just because I'm in love doesn't mean that Bob doesn't annoy me from time to time. "You're not really encouraging me here, Bob."

"Harry, I have a certain vested interest in making sure that you're capable of working," Bob explained. "Since this consultation business is your only source of income, it behooves me to make sure that you can complete each assignment without customers refusing to pay for bad service. And if it includes hounding you until you actually get some rest, then I'm prepared to be as annoying as possible in order to get you to bed." He eyed me. "Now, are you going to continue to be stubborn, or am I going to have to badger you some more?"

I kept up the glare. "That research isn't going to do itself."

Bob rolled his eyes. "I'm well aware of that, and I intend on continuing, but only after you get to bed."

I snorted. "Bob. Seriously."

"I'm not going to convince you to go to sleep on your own, am I?" Bob asked flatly, watching me steadily.

"Nope," I said cheerfully, heading for the lab.

Bob kept pace with me, walking through the wall and waiting until I'd closed the door behind me before speaking. "At this point, we seem to be concentrating on too many variables."

I sank onto my stool, and for once, I just sat there. I rested my jaw in the palm of one hand and just sat there. "Sorry, Bob, but after the amount of research we've done already, my brain's starting to fry."

Bob turned away from the bookshelf he'd been squinting at to shoot me an irritated look. "Why do you think I suggested that you sleep? After a few hours' rest, you might see our conundrum in a different light, or even think of an avenue of research we hadn't considered yet."

It was a good argument, and I'm sure that given a minute or two, I would have come up with a witty remark to his mother-hen routine, but my brain got stuck on the word 'our'.

It's not like Bob's never said the word before, or never stood with his back to me like he did now, his head turning as he perused book spines. The lines and curves, emphasized by the cut of his suit -- different flavors of red that made him look pale while reminding me of passion and energy.

I shook my head. _Dangerous territory, Harry,_ I told myself firmly. _He might catch on if you keep doing that._

But that 'our' sounded different in my head, somehow. It sounded almost like a promise.

"Hey, Bob, take five, will you?" I said suddenly, my lips tingling a little as I said it.

Bob turned from the bookcase to look at me curiously. "Very well. Have you thought of something?"

I shook my head. "Nothing useful about the case, but I wanted to ask you something."

His eyebrows rose. "Yes?"

"If you were able to turn mortal right now, no questions asked, no black magic involved, no breaking the laws of magic, what would you do?"

Bob blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me, Bob," I said. "What would you do? Where would you go?"

Bob blinked again, and then he breathed in slowly, his chest lifting with the motion despite the fact that he literally hadn't breathed in almost a thousand years. "Harry..." He paused, and squinted his eyes just a little. "I know we've rarely spoken about my brush with mortality, but can we please change the subject?"

I frowned, a bit surprised by the reaction. "Come on, Bob. You must have thought about it."

I could see the muscles in Bob's jaw tighten. "Perhaps so, but it would avail me nothing to dwell on it now."

"How come?" I asked. The curiosity was there, almost bursting at the seams -- I'd left Bob alone since the time Justin had turned him mortal and he'd had to pretend to betray me in order to make sure Justin died permanently, but I'd never stopped wanting to ask him about it. Now that I had, I almost wished I hadn't brought it up, given the look on Bob's face.

My mouth, on the other hand, had ideas of its own.

Bob looked at me, his eyes almost boring holes into my head. "I had a few bittersweet hours of mortality, Harry. To be able to smell the smog in the air for the first time, to actually feel the leather seats in the car that Justin's double used to take you to the morgue. To taste magic on my tongue, in my mouth..." He shook his head. "I have those memories, and I can remember them as though they'd happened only yesterday, and I know I can never have that again."

"But if you could?" I asked, my voice coming out gentle somehow. Ever since that incident, I'd made my own tentative plans to bring Bob back from his curse, to let him have mortality again. I'd been a bit stuck on the how, but I couldn't help but wonder what Bob would do if I ever managed to free him.

"Does it truly mean that much to you?" he asked, his voice low and curious, as though he hadn't considered the possibility that I'd think about this on my own. For all I knew, he really hadn't.

I nodded once, not trusting my voice as I looked up at him.

After a long silence, he nodded slowly. "Very well." He stopped, and then he looked puzzled. "To be honest, I've distracted myself from thinking about it for so long that I'm not sure what I would do."

I had to tamp down a smile. "Well, do you know of any places you want to see for yourself?" I started mentally preparing an itinerary.

He blinked, and then squinted his eyes as he thought, his lips pursing into a kissable near-pout. "I suppose I would travel to England, see if there are any surroundings that might have survived nearly a thousand years. Perhaps travel the continent, while I was there."

"You never went to Europe when you were alive?" I asked.

Bob shook his head. "Travel in those days was a serious undertaking. After I had finished my apprenticeship, I'd traveled northward to get away from people. Going to the continent would have been counter-productive."

"Okay, so where else do you want to go?"

"I'm not really sure," he hedged, and then he cocked his head. "Most likely to a place where there were no other people. One thing I've missed while being a ghost is being alone."

That stung a little, but I was pretty sure I didn't count. "Being alone?"

Bob nodded. "I'm rather sick of my fellow man, Harry, and it would be nice to live out in the middle of nowhere, at least for a while, and enjoy nature again. No one else to bother me, no one to be forced to make polite conversation with."

"Sure thing," I said, nodding. "I'm sure there's places we could go without having to worry about any neighbors for miles."

Bob paused for a moment, looking utterly baffled, and then he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I must not have been clear. When I meant 'being alone', I truly meant being alone. You've been a very good friend to me, and I'll always treasure our memories together, but let us not forget what exactly we are to each other." He looked pointedly at his skull, engraved with symbols and binding spells, sitting on top of one of my books like a morbid paperweight.

I felt like a rug had been ripped out from under me. I'd been in love with Bob since I was a teenager, and after Justin's death, I'd come to rely on him as the one friend that I had left who truly understood me. He had been a rock I could lean on when I was hurt or scared or angry. Finding out that he was willing to leave me behind in his 'get away from the world' idea, that he thought of me as his keeper first instead of his friend... it stung deeply.

I cleared my throat, trying to cover for the silence, but Bob kept going.

"There's been some projects that I've been working on during my... enforced retirement that I've yet to put to practical experimentation, for reasons that should be obvious," he said, his lips quirking into a bitter smile. "It would be wonderful to be able to see them in action. And before you ask, Harry, you know that a wizard's intent shapes their magic. Even if you were so inclined to listen to me try to explain my work to you, the way that you would create the effect in your mind wouldn't be the same as the way I would, so the spell could come out differently, even disastrously, were you to try to attempt it."

I nodded numbly. "I remember."

Bob nodded, looking satisfied. "It's good to see that you haven't forgotten everything I taught you."

"No, just all of the boring parts," I said wittily. Bob sighed and rolled his eyes. I managed a smile, but my heart wasn't in it. "Would you come visit in between projects?" I tried to ask as lightly as I could. "It'd do you good to get out of the house every once in a while."

Bob nodded. "I'm sure I'd find occasion to visit." The look of polite disinterest on his face almost made me wince. If I'd returned him to mortality, and he went through his plan to disappear from the world for a while so he could play with his experiments in peace and quiet, I'd be lucky if I saw him once a decade. Not the best thought in the world, but at least I wasn't fooling myself.

As much as this conversation had hurt, I told myself that I appreciated Bob's honesty. He hadn't sugarcoated what he really wanted in an effort to spare my feelings, and after a few centuries as a ghost, I'd probably want to get away from other people for a while, too. Hell, I'd probably want to get away from the guy who reminded me of a time when I was a literally a ghost of my former self.

For some reason, I had always thought that if I ever managed to bring Bob back to full-blown mortality again, with no strings, no cosmic debt hanging over either of us... well, I thought he'd stick around. That he'd end up staying here in Chicago with me, sacking out on the couch, or even taking the bed while I heroically suffered a pain in the neck or cramped legs on his behalf. That we'd fight over what kind of toothpaste to buy, or what food was left decaying in the back of the fridge.

Yeah. Right. In this land of fairy tales, Mai would give me a ride on her back as we flew over rainbows and danced in faerie circles while Morgan played a guitar and sang songs about love and joy and all that was good in the world.

Of course Bob would want to strike out on his own. Sure, he would've had to worry about the High Council, but after a few centuries of watching how the 'good guys' operated, I was fairly sure Bob could avoid being detected by their best Wardens after about a week or so of effort.

And of course he'd want to leave me behind. I was nothing but a reminder of when his will hadn't been entirely his own. Sure, I might have been the first master he'd served who'd actually given him free rein to do as he wished within the limits of his curse, but I hadn't tried to free him from the first day I'd become the guardian of his skull. In fact, the first thing I'd done as his master was interrogate him, accuse him of being a powerless liar, and lock him inside his skull for a month out of sheer anger and frustration.

Yeah, I was Mr. Congeniality, all right.

Despite finding out that returning Bob to mortality would mean that he would leave without ever looking back, I knew deep down that I'd still look for a way to break his curse and make sure he lived a mortal life before his soul was finally free to pass on. I love the guy, and sure, I can be selfish from time to time, but that would be going too far.

Sitting at my lab table, only half-listening to Bob's smooth, low voice as he detailed ideas as they came to him, I realized that I would rather live the rest of my life without Bob than to have Bob with me when I died, because there was no way I was going to let the man I loved be imprisoned for eternity. There was just no way.

Bob paused in mid-sentence, and frowned at me. "You haven't been listening to a word I've said, have you?"

I smiled up at him, a little sheepish. "Nope."

He rolled his blue-green eyes and sighed heavily. "Of course." He looked at me patiently. "Harry, are you quite sure you're not going to sleep?"

I nodded, and then my head swam a little, my vision going a bit blurry. I could feel something burr against my skin, and I yawned.

Bob shot me a victorious look. "Go to bed, Harry."

I scowled at him, but I got up from the stool and stretched my arms. "All right, fine. But don't think you've won."

Bob smiled fondly. "I will quaver in my shoes when you wake up, I'm sure. Good night, Harry."

I don't remember much about what happened after that. I know that I went upstairs and I planted face-first into my pillow. I remember distinctly feeling a sense of deja vu before blackness enveloped me, and I slept dreamlessly.

***

After what felt like exactly five minutes later, I woke up sluggishly and saw that night had already fallen. My skin felt like it was trying to migrate somewhere, and for some reason, I just felt angry. The investigation wasn't going well, the only person with any idea of what might be going on had been picked up by the Wardens, I'd learned just a few hours ago that if I actually achieved my master plan of freeing Bob from his curse, he was planning on walking out of my life without hesitation, and on top of all of this, I had the feeling that I was missing something obvious. I just had no clue what it was. Trying to ignore the rumbling threats my stomach was making, I headed downstairs and straight for the fridge. After fortifying myself with a Coke, I went to the lab.

"Hey, Bob," I managed around a jaw-cracking yawn, trying to keep calm when everything in me wanted to lash out. "found anything useful yet?"

Bob, who'd had his head shoved into another bookshelf, straightened and looked over at me. "Sadly, no."

I felt my temper flare. "How long does it take to check a book, Bob? _Two_ people are already dead, and Morgan's already been spirited away by the Wardens so that he can recover from having a _building_ fall on top of him. I'm not sure if you're feeling the urgency here, but if anymore people die, it's because I haven't figured out what the _hell_ is going on! So, I kind of need you to get on the ball and look faster! Can you do that?" I stopped myself with some effort, and closed my eyes. After taking a few breaths, I opened my eyes to see Bob watching me, his face expressionless.

"It takes me four hours," Bob said evenly, "to read through a single book, and that is if I know which chapters might be useful for your research."

Four hours. The words were like a splash of ice cold water on my face.

"You know as well as I that I am a ghost. I have been a ghost for several centuries, and I will continue to be so well after you are dead and buried," he continued, his tone not changing. I think that's what scared me the most. He could talk about whole lifetimes -- not just mortal lifetimes, but wizards' lifetimes as well -- without batting an eye. "In the grand scheme of things, these deaths are no more than a drop in the bucket of humanity, and no one will even remember them for centuries to come."

He stepped forward, closing the distance between us. Blue-green eyes looked into mine, completely unafraid of a soulgaze, and he kept talking in that eerie, almost inhuman tone.

"And yet, here I am, spending hour after mind-numbing hour, shoving my head into books and conducting research while you sleep. And why? Because you asked me. Because you need my help. Because, for once in my miserable existence, I have a care-taker who treats me like a person, and not some thing to be used and tossed aside."

He drew himself up, his back ramrod straight, his gaze now capable of withering plants at a hundred paces. "Now, if you wish for further assistance, you need to remember that I'm not mortal anymore. I had one chance to breathe, to feel magic course through my veins, to touch, and I gave it up for you. I realize this might be a monumental task, but _kindly_ refrain from berating me like a child because I cannot work outside of my means."

My heart didn't just plummet -- it went through the floor. Bob can get quite eloquent when he's angry, and when he's feeling really annoyed, he lets go with both barrels. It never failed to make me feel two inches tall when I was his apprentice, and it was still just as deadly as it was back then. It didn't matter that I was half-dead with exhaustion and frustrated because of how slowly the research was going. I had no right to accuse him of not helping to the best of his ability, especially since every time I'd spoken with Bob since this whole mess began, it was in the lab.

I gritted my teeth, my frustration wanting to get the last word in, but shame walloped frustration over the head with something heavy, and I ended up clearing my throat and mumbling an apology, not looking at Bob.

With the kind of satisfied nod that a knight of old gave to the dragon corpse that lay smoldering at his feet, Bob turned back to the bookshelf he'd been standing next to earlier, closed his eyes, and deliberately shoved his face back into the first book in the row, and then moving forward, the gold light fizzing around himself and the books until he was about halfway through the shelf.

I sighed through my nose and left the lab, heading for the kitchen to see if I had another Coke. My stomach had started roiling again about halfway through Bob's sneering reminder of his limitations, and if I was going to be of any use, I would need to calm my stomach down.

When I got to the kitchen, the phone rang. I picked it up. "Dresden."

"I need you to come down to the morgue," Murphy said.

"The morgue? Why, Lieutenant, I didn't know you were into kink," I said, and part of me was glad that my smart-ass gland hadn't atrophied into uselessness.

I could almost feel Murphy roll her eyes over the phone. "Very funny. Butters has something for us."

"I'll be right there." I hung up.

It didn't take long to get there, and when I showed, Murphy was already waiting for me. I don't know if it was a trick of the light, but she was already looking better than she had this morning, which was saying something. "Hey, Murph."

Murphy nodded, and then led the way to Butters' lab.

It was still as bare as it usually was, with one metal desk against one wall, the slab where Mr. Soggy lay a few feet away, and a few feet further down, Mr. Crispy. Both bodies were naked.

"Murphy," Butters nodded to her, and then when he saw me, he looked a bit surprised. "I had a feeling you might be called in."

"Why's that?" I frowned.

"Well, there aren't any interesting looking brands on the bodies this time, but this one--" He pointed to Mr. Soggy and approached his slab. "--certainly had an interesting cause of death."

"Which is?" Murphy asked, trying to sound patient and not managing it too well. A brush with death in the morning can do that.

"Water intoxication."

I blinked. "What?"

Butters smiled a little at the two of us. "Water intoxication. It usually happens when the victim drinks more than three gallons of water in a twenty-four hour period."

"He died because he drank too much water?" Murphy asked skeptically.

"There's been documented cases of it happening," Butters explained. "Your vic's stomach showed multiple tears when I got it out. But he actually died of heart failure due to his internal organs filling with fluid. The pressure caused by the surrounding organs crushed his heart so that it couldn't keep beating." He turned to the body, this time looking like the guy had deflated like a balloon. "From what I could measure, this guy had almost twenty-two gallons in his body when the techs finally brought him here, and that's after he'd been leaking pretty heavily at your crime scene."

My eyes widened. "And how many gallons is normal?"

Butters snorted. "Not this many, that's for sure. Counting in blood and other fluids the body needs in order to continue functioning properly, and the guy's weight, I'd say this guy should've had about ten, ten-and-a-half gallons normally?" He shrugged.

Murphy and I exchanged a quick glance with each other.

"Now, usually," Butters kept going, "water intoxication doesn't happen to the point where the victim is literally leaking all over the floor, but I'm guessing that's where you come in, Harry."

"How can you tell this guy wasn't drowned?" Murphy frowned at the corpse, taking a step or two closer.

"Well, drowning victims usually show either blood shift, where blood moves toward the thoracic cavity to make sure the lungs don't collapse, or peripheral vasoconstriction, where the blood flow to the extremities is shut down so that more blood can get to the vital organs, especially the brain."

"And you didn't find either of those," Murphy said.

"Right." Butters nodded. "Also, if you look at his skin." He moved in close, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves and picked up one of the guy's hands. "He's got washer-woman hands. It's common in floaters."

"But, this guy wasn't found in the water," Murphy said slowly, frowning at Butters,

Butters nodded. "Exactly. Now..."

I'm not sure why I looked up at that specific movement, but when I looked at the door, I noticed a very familiar face walk by the door to Butters' lab. Blinking, I mumbled something about coming right back, and then headed for the hallway. Looking one way, and then the other, I saw another flash of white hair and very dark clothing disappear around a corner, but when I got there and looked around again, it was gone.

"Harry?" I looked up to see Murphy half-jogging down the hallway to catch up with me, looking annoyed. "What're you doing out here?"

"Thought I saw someone," I muttered, frowning. Murphy rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, you probably did. It's a morgue. I'm sure there's other cops down here, talking to MEs. Now, c'mon. Butters still has more to tell us."

I nodded slowly, not wanting to leave the hallway, but letting her take me back. It didn't make any sense. The guy I saw wasn't a cop, because he hadn't been wearing the usual plainclothes suits that I was used to seeing around the police station where Murphy worked. But he also wasn't a medical examiner either, because of the lack of the white coat. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that he wasn't a relative of someone who'd died, or else he wouldn't have looked like he was almost... smiling.

But it couldn't have been Bob. I'd already strengthened the wards around my home and office to make sure I didn't have a repeat of the last time someone wanted to use Bob for their own ends. And why the hell would Bob be here, of all places?

Murphy half-pushed me back into Butters' lab, and I forced myself to concentrate. _Keep your eye on the ball, Harry,_ I told myself sternly.

"Have you run a tox screen on either vic?" Murphy asked.

Butters nodded. "We're still waiting on results to come back, but I got what I could from both of them."

Murphy nodded, and then asked, "Have you identified either of them?"

"It took a bit of doing with your water intoxication vic, but his name is Marvin Applegate, and his last known address is St. Paul, Minnesota."

"Minnesota?" Murphy frowned. "What's he doing here?"

"Maybe he wanted to see if the Windy City really is that windy," I offered, looking at Marvin again.

Murphy snorted. "And the burn victim?"

"According to the dental records we got from the hospital, this is Patrick McKinley," Butters replied. "Apparently, he chipped a tooth a few days before he died, and he needed to get it looked at. But that's not the interesting part."

"It's not?" I asked.

Butters shook his head. "I found some skin under Applegate's fingernails that had been embedded fairly deeply," he said, pointing at Applegate. "And it matches McKinley."

Murphy blinked. "So our two vics knew each other."

"At least well enough that Applegate scratched McKinley before he died," Butters agreed.

"Was there anything unusual about the burn victim?" Murphy asked.

Butters nodded. "No sign of accelerant, or anything else that would've caused him to go up," he said. "But there were patches of his arms that look like he'd been literally tearing off pieces of skin before he became the Human Torch."

I glanced at Murphy. "The witnesses said that he'd started screaming about cockroaches all over him, right?"

Murphy nodded before looking at Butters. "Did you check his brain?"

Butters nodded. "Just like you asked, and no, he didn't have any brain tumors or anything that would've caused hallucinations."

Murphy looked up at my face without meeting my gaze. "Any thoughts?"

"I'm not sure about him," I said, pointing to Applegate, "but Dark magic could've been on this guy. Hang on." I closed my eyes and concentrated questing out to feel the aura of magic around the body. And then I frowned. "I don't feel anything."

"And?" Murphy asked.

"Magic tends to leave residual energy, especially in an area where magic was used for a spell or a ritual," I explained.

"Like fingerprints?" she asked.

I nodded. "The only trouble is that if only a little bit of magic was used, sunlight is usually strong enough to erase it. Light banishing the darkness, that kind of thing."

Murphy nodded. "But Applegate was inside of a steel mill that had been closed down for years. Could that have done anything?"

I shook my head. "The building was abandoned, but it had broken windows. Light still could've gotten through." I looked at McKinley again. "And this guy was in a diner in broad daylight." Then I remembered something. "But... at both crime scenes, I still felt some residual energy."

"Which you shouldn't have, because of the sunlight thing, right?" Murphy asked, frowning. I nodded. "Would you be able to identify the magic if you came across it again?"

"It was... more like a buzzing sensation." I frowned. I knew I'd come across it somewhere before. I just couldn't remember where. I gave up and nodded. "Yeah, I can identify it again."

"Good," Murphy nodded. "Butters, was there anything else?"

"Not really. The next of kin needs to be notified, and that's it from my end," he said, looking curiously between the two of us.

"If anything else pops up," Murphy said, "call me."

"Will do, Lieutenant," Butters nodded. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a date with a gunshot victim."

Murphy and I went our separate ways in the parking lot, and when I got home, I felt really tired. I usually feel pretty tired a lot of the time, since I don't exactly get to choose my own hours or when any bad guys decide to attack me, but this felt... different somehow.

I don't like looking at bodies, especially ones that were killed by magic. Bob had taught me that magic stems from the essence of life. Being able to tap into a force of nature that can create such wonderful and powerful effects is like being an artist. And when someone uses magic to hurt, to kill, to destroy... it _feels_ wrong on a level that I can't describe.

But, that wasn't it. Most of the time when I look at bodies, I want to throw up, or hide somewhere where I don't have to look at them again. This time, I just felt numb. And that's not typical.

I got to the front door of my building and went inside, I could feel the numbness and the exhaustion wash over me, and all I wanted to do was sink back into bed, feel the warm sheets around me, and drift back to sleep.

Instead, I headed straight for the lab. I shoved open the steel door and stripped out of my coat, laying it over the seat of the stool. Bob had his head thrust inside one bookcase, and after a minute, he righted himself and nodded. "Ah, Harry. There you are."

"Here I am," I nodded, still feeling tired as I sank onto the stool. I rubbed my eyes and asked, "How can a guy drink too much water?"

"I beg your pardon?" Bob asked, sounding confused. I recapped the visit for him while I tried to wake myself up, leaving out the part where I saw him walking down the hallway.

When I was finished, Bob blinked. "Water intoxication?"

"Apparently, the guy drank too much water and it crushed his heart," I said. "It sounds crazy."

Bob frowned. "It's not actually that crazy, Harry. A spell could have done it, certainly."

I lifted my face out of my hands to frown at him. "What, like he cast a spell that made any standing water in the area drinkable?"

Bob shook his head. "More like he devised a spell where he could pour water directly into his mouth. It's rather useful if you're in a tropical climate, and you might not have the energy to actually drink something."

"But I thought spells like that only lasted as long as the wizard kept the energy going?" I asked, frowning. "Applegate had more than twice the normal amount of water in his body when he died."

Bob pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing as he thought. "It's quite possible that he devised a spell to pour a set amount of water into his mouth."

"Twelve extra gallons worth?" I demanded. "Could he have screwed up his calculations?"

"Anything's possible, I suppose," Bob said, not looking as confident as he sounded. "Why could it not have been an attack from someone or something else?"

"There weren't any signs of a struggle," I pointed out, feeling my eyelids droop. "And the only water was around the victim."

"Perhaps the homunculus idea?" Bob suggested.

I rubbed at my face and sighed. I'd gone to bed earlier today, and I felt crappier than I had before I'd gotten some sleep. I got up from my stool. "Bob, I can barely think straight. I need food."

Bob frowned. "You need rest."

I shook my head. "Already tried. Still tired."

Bob's frown deepened, but he nodded once. "You should still have some soda in the refrigerator."

"Thanks," I mumbled, and headed for the kitchen. I'd popped open a can of Coke and drank half of it, wishing that I had remembered to buy coffee on my last run to the grocery store when Bob emerged from the lab, looking at me intently. I felt a buzz against my skin, but it barely registered.

"You found something?" I asked, blinking a few times.

"Not precisely," Bob said, shaking his head. "But I think I might have figured out one method that the water intoxication could still have been a rather gruesome form of attack."

I frowned. "What happened to the homunculus idea?"

"Has the body degraded into something non-human?" Bob asked.

I shook my head, taking another sip of Coke.

"There's your answer," Bob said. "You know that homunculi aren't wholly human, and when the machine deteriorates, it would break down to its component elements, and it would no doubt have given the medical examiner quite a shock."

"But how can it be an attack?" I asked, still confused. "There weren't signs of a struggle."

"What about the victim's fingernails?" Bob asked. "He obviously knew the burned man enough to scratch him."

"Not even the most powerful wizard could cover up his tracks that well," I argued, "and it would've taken a freaking _huge_ amount of power to kill somebody using water."

Bob watched me for a long minute, one eyebrow arching. "Why not conduct an experiment?"

"An experiment?" I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"See just how much power it _would_ take to kill someone using water, and replicate spells you know. If one wizard attacking another creates the conditions that you discovered when you first saw the crime scene, then you have your answer."

It was an indication of just how tired I was, because what he said didn't sink in immediately. "You're proposing I go out, kidnap someone, and _kill_ them?" I demanded.

Bob sighed, glaring at me. "No, Harry," he said evenly, "I am not advocating Dark magic. I am merely suggesting that you find a suitable substitute. Perhaps a rat or two, so that you can duplicate the experiment and be sure of the results."

"Rats," I said slowly.

Bob nodded, smiling a little and actually looking like he was getting into the idea. "Yes. While certainly not genetically similar to humans, rats are still mammals. However much water it would take to drown one of the little pests, you could devise a formula and then apply it to a person's size and stamina."

I stared at him, and I could feel my blood run cold. There were times when Bob's scientific curiosity got more than a little morbid, and it tended to take me by surprise whenever it made an appearance, but there was something... off about this. Callously killing rats, even if they _are_ pests that I could live without, felt too close to torturing small animals. And drowning them, just to see how long it would take....

I shook my head firmly. "No," I said, sounding calmer than I felt.

"No?" Bob asked, looking disappointed.

"No." I downed the rest of my Coke and tossed the can in the trash without a word. And then I headed to the lab. Sitting down on my stool, I watched Bob turn around to look at me.

"Harry--"

"I am _not_ drowning rats, Bob," I snapped.

Bob blinked, his eyebrows lifting. "Very well," he said slowly. "What brought that idea on?"

I opened my mouth to remind him about... something. I stopped and blinked for a second, hearing a faint buzzing in my ears. There was something I was going to tell him. Something important, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what it was.

Bob frowned. "Harry?"

I shook my head. "Never mind."

Bob's frowned deepened. "Harry, are you feeling well?"

I blinked at him. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Perhaps you need some rest," he suggested gently. "You look terrible."

I shook my head, resisting the urge to yawn. "I can't. We'll get through these faster if we work together." I shot him a smile, which he returned after a moment.

"As much as I would appreciate the company," Bob said, "you look as though you haven't slept."

"It didn't feel like I did," I said, reaching over to rub one of my arms absently.

Bob frowned. "I've heard that warm milk does wonders for insomnia."

I smiled a little, touched by the suggestion. Warm milk had helped me get to sleep when I was a kid, when living at the Morningway estate had been new and scary. "Yeah, but this is feeling like I've been through the wringer even _after_ a few hours of shut-eye. I've gone without sleep before. Besides, I should be working with you on this, not sleeping the whole day."

Bob sighed. "Go back upstairs and lay down, at the very least. Even if you can't sleep, you can still give yourself some rest. And who knows? You might think of a solution to this conundrum."

I was a bit skeptical, but I couldn't suppress a wide yawn, exhaustion hit me like a wave, and I relented. "Fine, but wake me if you find something."

He smiled a little. "Of course."

***

The dream, when it started, was bright.

Not bright as in cheerful rolling hills and rainbows. It was as though I were in the middle of a nuclear blast, the light so intensely bright I could see it through my eyelids. I opened my eyes to find myself in my house, standing in the office, watching as a vague shape approach the front door. It opened with a small click, and then I was facing Ancient Mai.

Ancient Mai is... well, she's ancient. Hell, I've seen some strong evidence that she's not even _human_ , really. The last time I'd spent longer than an interrogation session with her, she'd been badly hurt, and she ended up dragging my house to the Other Side. Two Wardens died, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and why, and it really says something about a person when their reaction to two deaths is, "Good."

Ancient Mai walked inside the office, her footsteps slow and measured. The threshold didn't make her blink, and when the wards hit her about six inches further in, she walked through them like tissue paper, favoring me with a long, steady look with dark brown eyes. I tried to look away from them, but somehow, in the part of my mind that knew I was dreaming, I kept her gaze.

"Dresden."

"Ancient Mai," I said. "What can I do for you?" Who says I can't be polite?

"You're going to hand over the skull of Hrothbert of Bainbridge," she said. "Now."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why?"

"Your guardianship has ended," she said calmly, as if she weren't preparing to rip my guts out.

"No," I corrected her, "I meant, why should I just hand Bob over to you?"

She snorted. "There is a new threat to the city, and it's attacking people, Dresden." She walked in, her dark robes flashing gold as they swished around her legs. "Or has that escaped your notice?"

I felt my hands clench into white-knuckled fists. "Here I thought it was Beatles-mania gone horribly wrong."

Ancient Mai reached out with one hand, stroking the head of a dragon statue I kept on my desk, her eyes intent. "Regardless of what it is, an artifact of such power needs to be safe, and you've already proved your inability to protect the skull from being stolen."

I could feel my teeth start to crack, I was clenching my jaw so hard. "She had inside information."

"Hrothbert of Bainbridge can be misused." She looked back at me, her eyes like growing pools of blackness. "Immediate removal is the only way to be sure that the skull won't be used against us."

"That _he_ won't be used against _you_ , you mean," I spat. "You're not going anywhere with him."

"I'm not?" Her lips curled into a cruel smile. She reached toward the desk blotter. Something blurred in her hands, and then she was holding Bob's skull, the carved symbols standing out against the yellowed bone.

I growled, and stalked toward her, my hand reaching out to Bob's skull. "He's safe here, dammit. Put him down!"

She arched one eyebrow at me and asked, "How do you know the ghost isn't already in danger, Dresden?" She held up the skull in her hands, holding it up like something she'd dug up from her backyard and discovered was worth a fortune. Then she turned her dark gaze on me.

"What the hell is he in danger from here?" I demanded. "I've got stronger wards now, and if you don't put him down, I'll be more than willing to show you how I deal with would-be thieves."

"And what if you were under investigation, Dresden?" she asked coolly, tucking the skull under her arm in one smooth motion, looking at me steadily. "You have a history of Dark magic. You've attacked people before."

Images of Murphy, writhing on the floor as I used a voodoo doll on Boone, flashed in my mind.

"You've killed."

Her face was replaced by my uncle, grabbing at his chest, his tie askew, his mouth open.

"Why," she asked, "shouldn't we come after you?"

I woke up. On any other morning -- or whatever time it actually was, my sleep schedule was getting turned around faster than usual -- I would've bolted upright and panted harder than if I had run a marathon. This time, though, it felt like I was swimming against a strong undercurrent, hands grasping at air uselessly while I tried to surface from my dreams. After what felt like a lifetime of staring at the inside of my eyelids, I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Despite how long it took me to wake up, Mm heart beat triple-time in my chest, the noise pounding in my ears. I forced myself to resist the urge to shout for Bob.

I threw off the covers and got out of bed, hunting down a pair of jeans that weren't too dirty and a fresh shirt.

"Harry?"

I turned around quickly, my heart flying into my throat. When I saw Bob staring at me, I breathed deeply, barely noticing a buzzing against my skin. "Bob. Hell's bells, don't scare me like that."

Bob's eyebrows lifted in a curious look, but he only asked, "I take it you didn't sleep well?"

I sighed and shook my head. "Not really. And before you ask, I dreamt that Mai thought I was responsible for the attacks."

Bob nodded once. "She does usually think of you whenever something questionable is happening. I'm sure you remember... the Blackstaff coming to visit after my resurrection and subsequent death?"

I scowled, trying not to think about it. "We need to get back to work. Have you found anything while I was asleep?"

Bob shook his head. "Nothing useful, I'm afraid, though I wonder if perhaps the attacks have been perpetrated by a series of elementals."

"Elementals?" I frowned, heading down the stairs to the first floor. "I thought we'd already knocked that off the list of likely suspects. Why are you thinking it's elementals now?"

Bob appeared next to me in a blur of black, roiling smoke and kept pace with me as I headed for the bathroom. "If you think of the methods of attack. The first was killed by water, the second by fire, and you could think of the building Morgan was inside of as earth."

I stopped walking, shooting Bob a skeptical glance. "If there's an elements theme going, the next attack is going to use air?"

"If such an attack hasn't been made already," Bob corrected me. "Air is an easily hidden element, which makes your force attacks slightly more effective than your fire magic in combat. The attack itself could have been someone who jumped off a building, or was hit by something moving very quickly, or even something as simple as suffocation."

I winced. "Great." I reached the bathroom, and just as I put my hand on the door to push it open, I stopped.

Bob frowned at me. "What is it?"

"What if there's another pattern?" I asked, turning to look at him.

"Such as?" he asked.

I turned around and headed for the lab instead, my T-shirt and jeans over one shoulder. When I got inside, I closed the door behind me with some effort, lit the candles with a muttered word, and turned to find Bob worrying at his pinky ring with a thumb, his lips pursed.

"Where's my box of maps of Chicago?" I demanded, glancing around the room.

"Bottom shelf, metal cabinet, green suitcase," Bob replied immediately frowning at me. "What's going on?"

"The attacks might have another similarity," I said on auto-pilot, diving for the suitcase and wrenching it out. Tossing it on top of my lab table, I undid the clasps and opened it. A cloud of dust made me sneeze, but after a few yellowed maps of the United States and the Eastern Seaboard, I found a brochure of Chicago, a few years old. Unfolding it, I laid it out as flat as I could, grabbing a stubby golf pencil from nearby. Bob blinked, walking over to look at the map over my shoulder, and it was a sign of how distracted I was that I didn't try to soak in the moment of near-closeness while I could.

"Okay," I said, "the first attack was at the old steel mill," I marked the map. "The second--"

"At the diner," Bob answered, pointing at a spot northeast of the first mark. "Both fatalities."

I added little Fs to the map. "Next, the building came down on Morgan over here..." I marked the map again, and then I straightened.

Bob frowned at the map, and then shook his head. "I don't believe the attacks were meant to be a circle."

"Maybe whoever killed McKinley meant to kill them somewhere else?" I guessed.

Bob shook his head. "If the first murder was supposed to be the first point of the circle, the killer would have had to murder someone here." He pointed to a spot in the middle of Lake Michigan, close to the southern coast. "The circle would have been useless."

I sighed and shook my head. "Dammit."

Bob frowned, and then looked at me. "Have you noticed any similarities between the attacks? Something to connect the victims somehow? Perhaps the attacker left some sort of calling card, or some residual evidence?"

Residual evidence. Residue. I frowned. "Buzzing."

"Hmm?" Bob asked, eyebrows lifting.

"There was a... buzzing at each of the crime scenes," I said slowly. "Like Ronald Jones--"

Suddenly, it felt like a gorilla had jumped on my back, weighing me down while it held jars of bees over my ears.

"Harry?" Bob frowned. "Are you all right?"

I was about to tell him that I was fine, but the buzzing got louder, the weight heavier. "Stars..." I murmured. "I feel tired...."

Bob's eyes narrowed, and he watched me as I sat down on the stool, cradling my suddenly aching head in both hands. "Perhaps you should go rest, Harry," he suggested.

I snorted as best I could. "Tried that, remember?"

"Do it again."

The way he said it made me turn around to look at him. He stared at me without expression....

It was the same way he'd stared at the dragon when it had assumed its true form in my living room.

I felt an icy chill run down my spine. "Bob?"

He shook his head, taking a step forward until I had to look up at him. "Go to sleep, Harry."

Another uncomfortable memory gripped me, this time of the two of us in the Morningway estate, in the dead of night, just after Bob had grabbed the front of my shirt. I had been so surprised and terrified when he'd grabbed me that I hadn't been able to say anything. His order to me then had been every bit as scary as it was now. This time, I didn't know if I was in a dream, and I was going to wake up, or if I was going to go to sleep and never wake up at all.

"What're you doing?" I asked, almost whispering.

"I think I might have an idea, but if I'm right, you'll need your full strength," Bob said, his face solemn. "Go."

"Bob--" I said, ready to protest. I'm not a damsel-in-distress, and he knew that. He knew that I'd want to be a part of the solution, not someone who didn't know what the hell was going on.

He shook his head. "Harry, for once in your life, you need to trust me. Please."

I looked up into his blue-green eyes, watched him watch me, and then I remembered that while Bob had been pretty damn convincing as Justin's henchman, he'd also been watching out for me the whole time that he'd been alive. Everything he'd done, he'd done to try to stop Justin, to keep me safe. Something in his eyes told me that it was time to trust him again.

I sighed heavily. "Okay."

Bob nodded back, turning away from me and making a beeline to a specific bookshelf, bending down and shoving his head into the second row from the bottom.

And after what was a grand total of maybe fifteen minutes awake, I was headed upstairs to my bed, my feet feeling like they weighed twenty pounds each, exhaustion washing over me as I caught sight of my bed, and without another word, I landed face first into my pillow.

Have you ever gone to sleep and woken up after about an hour, and then when you tried to go back to sleep, you woke up again an hour later? Over and over again until you give up and get out of bed? You feel even more tired and achy than you were before you went to sleep that first time, and you know that you need more sleep, but you need to stay awake too? The past day or so had felt like that.

Well, not only like that, but instead of having to fight against a current to regain consciousness, my brain had to trudge its way through what felt like molasses. It almost sucked me back down into dark dreams, but I caught myself just in time and slogged forward, reaching for consciousness but feeling it just inches away. Somehow, I leapt for it, and whatever had slowed me down let go, like a kid letting go of a rubber band to shoot it across the room.

I opened my eyes to see that darkness was creeping into the sunlight. I sat up in bed after a few tries, one hand cradling my splitting skull. "Bob?"

A familiar fiery ember appeared, swirling in quick, tight circles of black smoke to reveal Bob, his dark red clothes making him seem paler somehow, his hair almost brighter. "Harry?"

I looked up at him, and then... I felt it again. The creepy-crawly sensation running across my skin, my ears buzzing.

Bob must have noticed the moment I realized something was rotten in the state of Illinois, because he narrowed his eyes at me. "Is something the matter?" he asked lightly.

I narrowed my eyes back at him, throwing off the covers and getting out of bed. When I straightened, he hadn't moved.

"Where's Bob?" I demanded.

Bob blinked, and gave me an innocent look that I didn't believe for a second. "Whyever would you think that I'm not Bob?"

"My skin is crawling, and Bob can't do that," I said. "What the hell are you?"

Not-Bob arched an eyebrow. "I see I've been underestimating you, Dresden," he purred, his voice low and rich in a way that felt like velvet against my skin. "Shame on me."

I glanced around quickly, trying to remember where I'd left my wand. Unfortunately, I couldn't see it, and summoning it to me wasn't really an option, not with my lack of control. "I bet you say that to all of your victims."

"Actually, no," he admitted. "But with only Warden Morgan's opinion of you, you could see why I would misstep."

"I'm going to ask you one last time," I said slowly, "What. Are. You."

"Does it matter?" Not-Bob shrugged. "You've discovered that I'm not what I appear to be, and as a result, you've become a threat to me."

"What do you want?" I demanded.

"Useful information," he said simply. "None of which you possess."

As cliché as it was going to sound, I had to stall this thing. Bob had gotten an idea of what I was up against before I'd gone to sleep -- that much, I was sure of -- but he hadn't made an appearance yet. I needed to give him more time. "You were behind the attacks, weren't you?"

The not-Bob creature nodded once. "I was, and still am." He smiled a little, just a quirk of the lips that made my heart twinge a little in my chest.

"You wanna tell me all about it?" I asked. "You tell me about the attacks, I'll tell you whatever you want to know. Deal?"

It was strange to see a confused look on Bob's face, and then a callous, almost evil-sounding chuckle. "I've already gleaned from you what I need, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden."

I shivered. The _thing_ , whatever it was, had almost said my Name right. "Sure, but what good's information if you don't know how to use it?"

Another evil-sounding laugh, this time mingling with the buzzing against my skin and accentuating it uncomfortably. "It will be a shame to kill you, Dresden, but I have little time."

"How are you going to do it?" I asked. "Make me jump off the roof of my own building?"

He shook his head. "I've already technically used the wind attack already, although you were able to save Lieutenant Murphy from being hit by the car."

Pieces started falling into place. "You were the one implanting fears into Morgan and Murphy."

"And the two wizards who are now deceased, yes," the creature said, a bit impatiently.

"Applegate was a wizard?" I frowned.

Not-Bob nodded. "I used his energies to enter Chicago undetected, and when he was of no more use to me, I ensured that the hallucinations he saw were dangerous to him, and that he defended himself adequately. He seemed to think that he was in a desert, without food or water." He smiled a little, looking malevolent and proud.

"So he drank too much," I said slowly. "But why didn't you die with him?"

"Why do you think, Dresden?" he asked me, and God, it was like being a teenager all over again, Bob asking me questions so that I would come up with the answers on my own instead of him giving them to me.

"You'd already hitched a ride in someone else," I said, realization dawning. "In one of the Wardens who came to take Applegate into custody."

"You really aren't as simple as the Wardens assume you to be," the creature nodded approvingly.

"What about the Warden in the diner?" I asked.

Bob gave me a confused look. "Who?"

"The one who set himself on fire," I growled.

"Oh, he was rather delightful," Bob said, smiling blissfully. "As a child, he lived in some structure known as a tenement house. There were cockroaches that would crawl all over him as he slept." He grinned, and I felt my stomach twist with revulsion at that gleeful look on his face. "It's a simple thing to nudge someone, to use their own fears against them."

"So you jumped into Morgan," I said.

"He actually made the building collapse on itself," Not-Bob pointed out helpfully, as if he were helping me in the lab. "Unfortunately, he wasn't as strong with earth magic as I thought he would be, or there would have been more devastation." He paused and then looked at me patiently. "Are you quite finished stalling for time? I need to transfer to a new host and leave you to your death."

I snorted. "And how do you think you're going to get a new host, buddy? I'm not going to help you, not when I know that you're just going to kill me."

Not-Bob smiled at me, and then nodded once. "Go downstairs to the phone, Harry."

There wasn't a tone of command in his voice, or even a breath of power, but I found myself heading down the staircase, holding onto the railing until I got to the phone in my kitchen, the buzzing noise ringing in my ears and crawling up and down my arms like an army of ants. There was a blur in the air, and then I saw the not-Bob appear in front of me, his eyebrows raised in a modest expression.

"How the hell did you do that?" I snarled.

"Don't you know?" he asked, sounding almost surprised by the question. "Each time you've fallen asleep, you've left yourself vulnerable to me." He smirked. "You are my pawn, to do with as I will."

If this had been a wet dream, and I were twenty years younger, that voice would've revved all kinds of engines. As it was, it felt like someone's fist was squeezing around my heart. "Fuck you."

"Ah, but that's the trouble, isn't it?" he asked lightly, moving in until we were standing too close for comfort. Unlike Bob's usually chilly aura brushing against mine, this felt... warm. Alive. I shivered. "You want that, and yet, it terrifies you to say a single..." His eyes drifted from mine to rest on my lips. "...word."

I clenched my teeth, hard, and snarled back, "If you're going to kill me, get it over with already."

"In due time," he murmured.

"Harry!" came Bob's voice, sharp and worried. "Don't let it touch you!"

"Wasn't planning on it, Bob," I said, but the thing wasn't moving.

"What if he were, warlock?" the creature asked, turning to look at Bob. "You know what I am."

Bob's cheeks flushed, and he bared his crooked teeth in an animalistic snarl. He closed the distance in a swirl of smoke and fire, and then there were pale, smooth, strong hands grabbing fistfuls of the impostor's suit jacket, yanking him away from me. For the first time since I'd seen it, the creature's eyes widened in shock. It tried to break free from Bob's grip, but Bob was too strong. The thing shoved Bob away from it, causing his jacket to tear, leaving scraps of dark fabric behind in Bob's clenched hands.

With a vicious curse, Bob hauled off and socked the impostor in the jaw.

It backpedaled quickly, as though Bob's punch had knocked it wildly off-balance, and then it glanced at me before suddenly grinning at Bob.

And then it slammed right into me, literally _melting_ into my chest.

I staggered, off-balance from the roar of buzzing that suddenly sounded in my ears. I caught myself on a kitchen counter, my head spinning.

"Harry!" Bob said, blue-green eyes wide with fear. "Are you all right?"

"No..." I said woozily.

And then everything went black.

***

When I woke up, I was still exhausted, but this time, I had the brand new discomfort of silver shackles encasing my hands, and silver chains draped over me. I tried to move, but the buzzing sensation that I'd been feeling for the last few days resounded in my head, as if someone had shoved a hornet's nest in there and locked the door.

Well, that wasn't good.

I looked around, and found that, instead of being inside of my combination house/office, I was in the mental landscape I'd been in before when my subconscious had wanted to have a chat with me. This time, though, a light shone from over head, shining just enough to reveal that not only was I chained, but also contained in a magical circle. I could feel one edge of the circle near the top of my head, the power buzzing angrily enough to duke it out with the buzzing already in my ears and making me wince.

As if this weren't bad enough, not too far away from the magical circle I was trapped in, there was a rough-hewn tunnel, etched into the darkness itself, the light of the outside world shining inside gently enough to show that I wasn't alone.

A long, serpentine creature with blue-green eyes coiled and slithered, making its way around my prison, the scales rasping against each other in a loud, echoing hiss. Its attention wasn't focused on me, fortunately, but on a patch of darkness that was just outside of the range of the tunnel.

"Get the hell away from him," I heard a voice snarl, and with a start, I realized it was mine.

Somewhere, in the middle of all that blackness, was my subconscious. And he sounded pissed. Hell, I was pissed myself at the situation, but my subconscious doesn't have my sense of restraint.

" _Fuego!_ " my subconscious shouted, and a lance of white-hot fire leapt from the shadows, slamming into the scales of the thing's lower half. It roared, sounding annoyed, and lashed out with an arm tipped with three claws, each longer than my legs. There was the sound of someone rolling, a muttered curse, and then--

Pain. White-hot and _furious_ erupted in my head. I grunted, squeezing my eyes shut and wanting to _scream_. Dimly, I was aware of the sound of nails ripping fabric, and then I sagged onto the floor.

I opened my eyes in time to see a silhouette stumble in through the tunnel, looking around quickly, light catching on pale hair. "Harry?"

Stars and stones.

Bob.

My subconscious saw the strike aimed at Bob before Bob did, because he shouted a warning, and grabbed him seconds before claws missed and dug new furrows into the landscape. The scream stuck in my throat, and I barely let out a whimper.

"Bob, no time, help me save him," my subconscious said quickly.

"Harry, I can barely see--" Bob said before I heard, " _Ignus lumina!_ "

Two ribbons of flame flew out of the darkness, but instead of striking at the snake like I'd expected, hundreds of candles burst to life, the flames lighting them as they flew by.

And when I turned to see Bob and my subconscious standing next to each other, my double wearing a black leather duster and a goatee, Bob in his usual suit (a blue one that brought out his eyes), my double was staring at Bob in utter amazement. Bob looked a bit stunned himself.

Of course, that's when the snake struck.

Now that I could see it a bit more clearly, the snake was more like half-snake, half-lizard, its two forearms with large paws and the long, wicked-looking claws that I saw not moments before. Its head looked almost like a dragon's, the long wispy mustache fluttering in a non-existent breeze. It roared and struck, claws flashing in the firelight, aiming at my two would-be rescuers.

"Scatter!" my double shouted, throwing Bob to one side before bobbing and weaving in the opposite direction, long legs eating up the distance. The claws missed again, and this time, I knew what was causing my pain.

The claws didn't just rip into the landscape, the snake-thing twisted them out, adding a new level of pain to my already aching head. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to wall away the pain. But how could I? This was pain coming from inside of my freaking _head._ Mind over matter might actually work sometimes, but it doesn't help with head injuries all that often, I've discovered.

"Harry!" Bob shouted at my double, eyes focused on the creature. "Can you free yourself?"

My double glanced at me, and then at Bob. "What do you think I've been trying to do for the past couple of days, play canasta?"

Bob frowned, raising his arms in front of him. If I hadn't known he'd lived in Medieval England, I would've sworn he'd learned that stance from a martial art. "Very well. You'll distract him, and I'll free your other self."

It seemed a bit stupid to me to broadcast our plan where our reptilian friend could hear it, but my vocal chords really weren't up for much at the moment. I lay inside the circle like a limp noodle, the buzzing slowly dying down in my ears.

Subconscious Harry shook his head quickly, and then glanced at me again. "Ready?"

Bob nodded once, watching the serpent slither toward him, the scales hissing. "Ready."

Somehow, I could see my double's lips count up to three, and then he shouted, "Now!"

Bob stretched out his hands, his right hand in front of him and the other towards the tunnel. As I watched, he barked, " _Fulgur gladius!_ "

A lance of lightning streaked from the daylight beyond the tunnel, into Bob's outstretched hand, danced across his skin, and then out his right hand, his finger pointed at the serpent. It smacked the thing right between the eyes, causing it to writhe and jump, its tail lashing against the floor, its roars closer to shrieks of pain. The floor shook, and I saw my double race towards me, teeth bared. At the last moment, the tail caught my subconscious right in the torso and flung him across the landscape. He landed with a loud curse a good distance away.

I turned my head a little to see Bob, and he'd... changed. His hair gleaned almost silver in the candlelight, his eyes flashing. His crooked teeth were bared as he stared down the serpent, and he wore robes of the finest velvet, looking almost like liquid midnight wrapped around his body, emphasizing long limbs and muscle, the fabric rustling with each motion.

He was dark poetry in motion, and I didn't want to look away.

As I watched and my double recovered from getting hit by a few hundred pounds of snake-tail, Bob was casting spells at the thing, alternating hands, his concentration never wavering. One, two, three, four, he didn't even look like he was breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, the spells weren't having too much of an effect on the scaly pain in the ass.

"Harry!" Bob snapped. "Stop dawdling and help me!"

My double ran faster, taking a wide circle behind the serpent and holding both hands outstretched as he took a flying leap. When he came down, he was wielding a heavy oak staff, which slammed right into the snake-lizard's spine with a sharp _crack_. The lizard roared, and whipped around to snap its jaws at my double, but he got out of the way too fast for it.

Bob took the opportunity to bow his head and close his eyes, his expression one of deep concentration. He reached out in front of him, his fists resting against each other, thumbs aligned. He murmured quickly under his breath, and gritted his teeth, drawing his hands apart.

Gleaming silver light shone, almost too intense to look at directly, but from what I could see in Bob's face, he was grinning like a madman. When he was finished, he held aloft a broadsword made of silver light.

I know what you're thinking, but Bob's never seen Star Wars. Whatever this was he'd constructed inside my mind, it rang like a bell before he got a better grip on it.

He shouted something guttural and angry, and in the light of the blade he'd created, I could see an animal light in his eyes that reminded me that, once upon a time, Bob had been a wizard in Medieval England, complete with raids on villages and war and death.

The first strike of the sword cleaved a sizzling silver-white arc of energy through the creature's torso, just under its arms, and it screamed loud enough to make the world shake. My head ringing, my ears buzzing, I tried to take deep breaths and remind myself that now was not a good time to notice how sexy Bob looked as an avenging angel, my very own knight in shimmering velvet robes.

My double took the brand-new sword in stride, jumping off the creature's back in order to keep it distracted. Bob shouted instructions to my double, which I didn't catch but after a few minutes, I could see what they were doing. As Subconscious Harry kept it occupied with spells and occasional whacks from the staff, Bob was climbing onto its back, running up the length of its spine. I thought that the serpent was going to send him flying like it had my double, but each time the lizard-thing twisted and bucked, Bob would grab one of the spines and hang on until the other me got its attention again.

At one point, the lizard finally grabbed the staff out of my double's hands and snapped it with its teeth, shattering it to splinters out of sheer frustration before lashing forward with its claws again. Just as the claws were about to snap over my double's leg, there was a slash of brilliant silver white light, and then the creature was toppling over, black blood spurting in a gory fountain from a wound in the back of its neck. It shrieked, twisting and writhing in agony as Bob hopped from back of its neck, dusting himself off as the creature gave its final death throes. My double looked like he wanted to finish the job Bob had started, but my mentor shook his head, black blood striping across his face and speckling his hair.

The creature finally gasped, shook once in an all-body shudder, and went still.

Bob and Subconscious Harry both turned to the corpse, and Bob moved closer to it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing," my subconscious demanded.

Bob raised an eyebrow. "We need to find out who sent this demon, and why."

"Demon?" my double asked, looking at the corpse.

Bob nodded. "Demon. It's what I wanted to research while you -- or rather, your conscious aspect -- were sleeping." He moved closer to the body, which had begun to steam, and kicked it firmly with one foot, rolling its head onto its side.

I missed what happened next, but both of them stepped back and stared at the air above the head before trading a look.

A bit fed up with the chained-to-a-rock bit, I cleared my throat. "Guys? A little help, if you don't mind."

Bob started, turning toward me and about to hurry over when my subconscious stopped him.

"Hey, hang on a sec," he said, and the bottom fell out of my stomach, which was an uncomfortable sensation while lying on the floor.

Bob turned to him, looking concerned. "Yes?"

Subconscious Harry, who's really a bit of a jerk, moved in closer to Bob, sliding an arm around Bob's waist.

"Harry?" Bob asked, looking curious and confused. "Were you injured?"

My double shook his head silently.

"Are you all right?" Bob murmured, looking him over as best he could while my double held onto him.

"I'm fine," he said, and I could see it from where I was laying down. There was a hungry yearning in his eyes, almost savage in its intensity. But while he stared at Bob like he wanted to devour him, he held Bob close, as though he never wanted to let go. I saw the moment he reached a decision.

_No,_ I thought to myself, _no, you dumb son of a bitch, don't do it, don't ruin it--_

My double dipped Bob a la most love scenes in old movies, and even some romance novel covers, and kissed him deeply, right where I could see it.

Being the captive audience I was, I couldn't break it up if I wanted to, but seeing my subconscious, complete with evil-me goatee and black leather duster, kissing the man I'd been in love with for more than twenty years... it was beautiful. The play of light and dark features speckled here and there with black blood, Bob cuddled close and protected in my double's arms, it was like watching my favorite dreams being played out right in front of me.

Despite the fact that it should've been _me_ kissing him, and not my subconscious, I tried to remember every inch, every detail of that kiss, so that I could bring out the memory to enjoy whenever I was having a rough day. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

The kiss ended after about three hours or so, and my evil, son-of-a-bitch, two-timing double righted Bob and stepped back. As much as I didn't want to do it, I looked at Bob.

Landed fish didn't even begin to describe what Bob looked like. Shock, fear, worry, and concern chased themselves across his face, and while he was wrestling with the problem, my double did something that, in retrospect, I could understand.

He grabbed the front of Bob's robes, spun him around roughly, planted one black boot against Bob's ass, and shoved him toward the daylight tunnel. Bob let out a yelp, and disappeared into the bright light. Then my double turned to me. He smirked as he scuffed a toe across the circle, breaking it and letting the energy escape out of the tunnel in a bright red ribbon of light and sound.

"Why the hell did you do that?" I demanded.

"What?" my subconscious asked with a shrug. He waved a hand dismissively, and the chains draped over me dissolved. "Don't tell me that you haven't wanted to do that for _years_."

"There's a difference between me kissing him, and _you_ kissing him," I spluttered, righting myself and shaking my hands. The manacles encasing them puffed into silver smoke and wafted away as if they'd never existed in the first place. Who says I don't make things easy for myself?

"Are you stupid?" my double asked. "I _am_ you, and if I may say so, that kiss was damn good."

"Don't even," I snarled.

My subconscious self helped me to my feet, and said, "You do realize there's a reason that demon got under our defenses so easily, right?"

"And you're going to tell me what it is, right?" I asked, rolling my eyes.

"You were willing to believe that Bob would say every single thing that demon said to you." He snorted. "It's been twenty years, you idiot. I'm kind of sick of the whole unrequited love thing. I'm not giving anything else a chance to tear apart what defenses we have left because you're a big girl. Bob will leave, just like everyone else has left, and it'll be back to the two of us. I'd _like_ for us to have a relationship with someone where you can actually _trust_ them to stick around, but at this point, I'm in favor of defense."

"That's a bit mercenary, don't you think?" I asked.

He snorted. "I want to get laid, and I want to make sure whoever I'm fucking doesn't try to kill me."

"Good point," I said, remembering Tara stealing Bob's skull with a wince. Eager for a change in subject, I motioned to the tunnel and asked, "Okay, so how're we gonna fix that?"

He shook his head. "I'll take care of most of it, but we need to get our mental defenses up."

I nodded slowly before turning back to him. "All right."

"Do you have any more stupid questions?" he asked quickly. "No? Good. Then wake up."

I opened my eyes, and found myself flat on my back on the kitchen floor. No matter how fun that might sound, it was a pain in the ass. And the back. And anywhere else that had landed on the floor before my trip inside my mind.

I sat up gingerly, wincing, and then it hit me.

My subconscious had kissed Bob.

Even if I could think of some plausible explanation as to why it had happened, my subconscious still jumped Bob's bones as best he could, and there was no mistaking that kiss. Not even Bob could've passed it off as over-enthusiastic hero-worship of a student for his teacher, or whatever.

No matter how I sliced it, I knew one thing for certain. After twenty years of unrequited love, I'd been unexpectedly outed by my jerk of a subconscious, and if I was lucky, I'd still have a friend by the end of this mess. Bob was finally going to have to turn me down flat, and I was going to have to take it like a man.

I leaned over gingerly, aiming a glance around the room, and vaguely wondering why Bob wasn't around, but I soon realized that I really _didn't_ want him to be around. I didn't want to have to sit through his awkward apologies, and have to listen to him be flattered by the attention, but really, Harry--

I cut myself off before I could fill in Bob's half of the dialogue. With a sigh, I stood up and brushed myself off, gently checking for any bumps or bruises that I might have picked up while laid out on the floor by a serpent in my head. Finding nothing that ached more than anything else, and no signs of bleeding, I weighed my options.

A, I could present myself to Bob, weather the death of twenty years of love and lust and more than a little hopelessness, and try to continue to live life as normally as possible.

Or B, I could head out, check on Morgan and Murphy, see if there were any long-lasting effects that the demon might have left behind as souvenirs of the encounter. Of course, I thought to myself in a voice that sounded uncomfortably like my subconscious, the demon tended to prefer not to leave witnesses, so it was quite possible that Morgan and Murphy were going to pull through just fine. They didn't need me around to check on them and play nanny, especially since Morgan was a Warden of the High Council, and he had more than enough underlings to play nanny for him. Probably prettier people than me, at any rate.

Murphy, on the other hand, had dealt with the supernatural a whole bunch of times. Some times were worse than others, and she's had more than her fair share of battle scars to show for it, but it didn't mean that she needed more of them.

I looked down the hallway, and for once, I didn't pick at the scab that hurt too much to poke.

Instead, I took a deep breath, grabbed my hoodie, and walked out the door, feeling like a coward every step of the way.


End file.
